


It had to be you

by TaciturnSunday



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: F/M, M/M, SPOILERS AHEAD, Sara is emotionally stunted, adventure at some point, lots of people dealing with feelings, occasional smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-12 00:06:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 39,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10477620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaciturnSunday/pseuds/TaciturnSunday
Summary: Sara Ryder has never been in love. It's a brand new galaxy, and she's running from more than she likes to admit. It's been a long life, and maybe it's time to let someone in.





	1. words to say

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've put up since 2014, for a lack of motivation and of courage. This game has me in a choke-hold, and seventeen minutes was not enough Reyes for me. So here's more.  
> As to how long this is going to be, I can tell you with confidence I have no idea. This could end up being a one-shot. But it might not be. Who knows.  
> Thank you for reading!  
> (warning for adult situations at the end of this chapter) 
> 
> Song Inspo for the chapter: Never Had a Dream Come True, S Club 7 (because I'm really into cheesy music)  
> ...  
> Everybody's got something  
> They had to leave behind  
> One regret from yesterday  
> That just seems to grow with time  
> There's no use looking back, or wondering  
> How it could be now or might've been  
> All this I know  
> But still I can't find ways to let you go

 

* * *

 

 

Falling into bed was easy with boneless limbs; falling asleep was harder with a restless mind.

A mind that was in love.

Sara Ryder had never been in love. Her father’s sociopathic tendencies and distant parenting style didn’t make her an easy person to fall for. She and her brother were two sides of the same coin. They were both manipulative, and their anger flared all too easily. Sara burned hot, while Scott turned cold. They had strange senses of humor, were entirely too used to killing, running for their lives, and wanting the unattainable to ever consider ‘domesticity’. And it wasn’t like they’d had a clue of what that even was, anyway.

So she hadn’t considered love, before.

Jaal was the first person to bring it up, in Andromeda.

Sara had been so locked inside her own head, hyperfocused on the _mission_ , that she’d barely understood what he was talking about. No one had even mentioned the concept for- well- for 634 years. Give or take a few months. And while it didn’t necessarily feel that long; it felt that long.

Jaal had told her about a lost love- to his own brother, ouch- over dinner, one night. They were huddled in the kitchen, and she’d been watching him cook an Angaran delicacy. He cooked all his own meals, and he was very good at it. Her father had been good at cooking, and it was centering to watch. Jaal was a talkative sort- once he’d opened up, he _really_ opened up- and liked to regale her with stories, tales of his people, his culture, and Andromeda history. He chose that night to tell her about the girl who had broken his heart.

Sara had found the concept so foreign, she’d stiffened up to her usual awkward muttering whenever the Angaran got too ‘touchy feely’. Considering _hugs_ were a rarity in her family, he put her into sensory overload after a few minutes of conversation.

But that night, when her head hit her pillow, she couldn’t think of anything else, given what had happened.

It was a simple thing, Kadara. Or it was supposed to be. Just like Eos. But that’s what she’d said about Havarl, and Voeld, and Elaadan. All of them were supposed to be simple ops; deal with the local flora and fauna and its initial attempts to kill her, activate the monoliths, deal with anyone already camped out nearby, outpost.

Of course, she should have known from the moment she set foot on Kadara- her hoodie and sweatpants sticking out like a sore thumb- that it would be anything but.

Sara Ryder had an AI in her head- she was a super soldier who could stop her own heart to get out of a bind- who could turn her biotics on and off like flipping a lightswitch- see for miles if she wanted to, smell and hear and taste and _live_ so much more than any other human on record. And yet, she and SAM were equally baffled by the feelings that had rushed up to punch her in the gut when Reyes Vidal _winked_ at her.

Some people called Sara Ryder cocky, and she could understand why. She _was_ cocky; damn good at her job, sure shot with a rifle, and she’d stolen a kett sword off the corpse of one of their finest warriors. It hung on her armored hip most days. So, she’d strolled around Kadara like she owned the place- and she would, soon enough. She didn’t care about power or money or land, but it was the principle of the thing.

Start a colony, and everyone remembers who did it.

It was probably something to do with her dad’s god complex. But she didn’t like to think too hard about it. It just made her remember he was dead, and her brother had only just woken from a coma- and lord knew she’d practically sprinted back to her ship and to the other side of the cluster to avoid _that_ emotional time bomb.

But the bastard had _winked_ at her- so what good did running do?

When she convinced Liam to get drunk with her at Kralla’s Song, he supposed it had something to do with her dying again. Maybe she was a little bit less of a robot every time she came back- some fucked up Jesus, he’d said. Sara thought it was too close to home to be hurtful. She was looking for an explanation, after all, not something to cry about. She’d done more of that since arriving in this Galaxy than the entirety of her time back home.

So was it some kind of emotional vulnerability that drew her in?

Or was he really just honey- and she, a very stupid fly?

Because she’d known the man was dangerous the moment he’d sidled up to the bar next to her. The mask he’d worn when he approached was an innocent- as innocent as an exile could be- open expression of a man wanting to buy a pretty girl a drink. SAM had read it in his features for her. Along with all the weapons he had on him. Reyes Vidal had been trying _very_ hard to act innocent. It was a disarming tactic that Sara would have found intriguing if it weren’t so overused by those in the underworld.

But then, somewhere along the way, she’d gotten drawn into his game. The worst part was, she wasn’t sure when it _stopped_ being a game for him. Maybe if she’d known, she could have kept herself from slipping down into his hands.

Those hands that had grasped onto her _desperately_ when she kissed him in Sloane Kelly’s supply closet. He’d said ‘distraction’, and that was the easiest thing, wasn’t it? They were at a party, in their soft civvies, and she’d drank some pink thing at the bar. Sara trusted Umi not to poison her, but now, she knew not to accept another drink. But his mouth had tasted like cherries, too, so maybe he’d been working up to it.

Breaking into a party, just to steal a bottle of whiskey, to take her on- what? A date? Sitting on a pile of cargo passing the bottle back and forth, watching the sunset? Was that a date? That’s what he’d called it- and they’d kissed again. SAM had faintly informed her his affections seemed to be genuine, by the track of his pulse.

“I can put you to sleep, if you like, Sara,” SAM said softly, his voice bouncing around in her head like her own thoughts. Sometimes she couldn’t tell them apart. Sometimes there was nothing to tell. He _was_ her.

“You might have to,” she said out loud, even though she knew she didn’t need to.

“Is that a yes?”

She was quiet, the thrum of the Tempest’s system’s the only thing in her entire world. That, and the ‘ _Bang’_ of his hiding gun, firing on loop from the darkness of the cave. She could have stopped it. But she didn’t. She knew he was a liar from the beginning.

“ _You have very bad taste in men, Sara_.”

“The worst,” she whispered to the darkness of her quarters. She heard Mittens stirring lightly on the pillow next to her. He made soft, musical little sounds in the back of his throat that made her ache for the Milky Way, as she so often did. But after a time, the pyjack quieted, and so did Sara.

Eventually, she let SAM put her to sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

“Pathfinder, we’ve got a problem.”

Gil Brodie was the last person Sara wanted as an alarm clock. Not because of his voice; that was soothing. But he was the tech officer- the Engineer onboard the Tempest. If _he_ was waking her up, something was wrong. But a glance out her window- SAM automatically triggering the chameleon glass’s shift to transparent- told her it was morning, and they were not in atmo. Unless the ship was rigged to explode, it was nothing they couldn’t handle here on the ground, in port.

“Just a minute, Gil,” she said, knowing that SAM would transmit it to Brodie’s comm channel.

No matter how long she scrubbed her hands over her face, it was still Kadara. It was still the Port. Reyes was still the Charlatan, and she’d still handed Kadara to him on a silver platter.

No matter how _nicely_ he’d kissed her for it, he was still a criminal. And it would have been great if she could run from her choice, like she had from Scott.

Thinking of her brother made her fingers part so she could glance guiltily at her untouched email terminal. She knew there were three messages sitting in her inbox, gathering dust. All from him.

The thought got her up and moving, since she couldn’t _actually_ move.

Hoodie and sweat pants pulled on, Sara ran her fingers through her ink colored hair and made her way down to the drive core.

“We aren’t going anywhere for three days, at least,” Gil opened with, as Sara stepped through the doors. Kallo, of course, was standing just next to the human, his lanky arms folded across his chest,

“That isn’t necessarily true, Ryder. If we use the _original_ schematic of the Tempest as a base, I could have the ship up and running by this afternoon-”

Gil turned redder than usual, and stamped his foot, motioning to the darkened drive core- it _looked_ sickly, “The original schematic is what got us here, damn it! My fix will make sure this doesn’t happen again. You’re _lucky_ it happened while we were docked.” Without waiting for a response from the sputtering Salarian, the engineer turned back to Sara, who was entirely too sleep addled to comprehend their argument, at the moment, “You give me access to mission funds, I’ll head out to the market with Vetra and Drack this afternoon. With Jaal and Liam’s help, I can have her up and running in less than thirty-six hours. That’s a promise, Ryder.”

“An _unnecessary_ one,” Kallo said through clenched teeth.

Sara sighed, arms crossed, “SAM, give Gil whatever access he needs to funds, and send a message to Vetra and Drack-”

“Nakmor Drack is unconscious on the lower levels of Tartarus in the Kadara slums, Ryder. My preliminary scans show he will be indisposed for some time.”

Sara scraped a hand down her face.

“Then just tell _Vetra_ -”

“Uh, no offense, Ryder,” Gil broke in, “But I’m not setting foot in Kadara port without a Krogan behind me.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m saying, and nothing against Vetra,” Gil insisted, “that I’m not going out without Drack.”

The ‘you have got to be kidding me’ went unsaid, but completely understood. Gil was a stubborn bastard, and Sara knew any workaround she could come up with would be useless. She also didn’t need to mention that everyone _else_ didn’t seem to have a problem frequenting the port- but then again, those were the folks that dove down gravity wells with her into Remnant vaults- Kadara was likely as threatening to them as it was to her.

And damn it if Sara didn’t have to head down to Tartarus anyway, to talk to Kadara’s new ‘King’. Drack might be a good excuse to leave early, though, so with that in mind, she tried to find a positive- and keep herself from strangling Gil.

 

There were plenty of positives, actually. Really, Drack getting drunk out of his mind was a gift- his tab probably wasn’t, as the sheer volume of booze it would take to get a krogan blackout pissed was probably astronomical. But it was the perfect excuse to get out of that bar quicker.

She just needed to confirm a few things with Reyes- _fuck_ , just his name was doing things to her, now- with Vidal- that was easier. Transfer of power, the Outcasts status, outpost locations, Port manifests. The usual stuff. The totally platonic, strictly, ‘I haven’t spent the last week making out with you’, stuff. The, ‘how could I possibly be in love with a man like you’, stuff. The, ‘my father would shoot you on sight- or more likely, use you for his own gain, _then_ shoot you on sight for associating with me and oh _god_ I miss him why did he have to-’ ah, and there she went, again.

Sword, pistol. That’s all she needed. Tech and biotics were weapons enough, the sword she saved for kett because of the irony. It was a hell of an intimidation factor, though. How many people walked around with swords, these days?

The elevator ride down into the slums had never taken so long. It was a big, ill kept industrial elevator. Crowded in close with hover transports and grey eyed workers. The Angarans looked at her like spoiled food, the humans like a wolf in their midst. The Milky Way aliens- krogan, Asari, turian- their faces were too strange to tell. She assumed it was something along the lines of, ‘other’. Even when people didn’t know about SAM, they could sense something off about her. Asari especially.

But she stepped off, and the air choked her with its stink of potent chemicals and garbage, but it was still better than the tightness of the elevator. She had a thing about suffocation, after all.

And of course, it was all too easy to see that he’d sent someone to shadow her. Whether it was just to watch her, or to protect her, Sara couldn’t be sure. Back when he’d not blown his cover, Collective outlaws had attacked her all the time. Now, it seemed they were keeping a distance. Wary or respectful, she couldn’t tell. She liked to think it was the former, because having a crew of criminals in her debt wasn’t something Sara liked to think about. Her mother would roll in her grave.

When the doors to Tartarus opened, Sara stepped into the familiar, almost welcoming darkness with the comfort of anonymity descending with the strobe lights. There was a pulsing crowd inside, despite the noon timeframe- but the junkies and the criminals were up at all hours, and this was always the place they went. There were people lining the walls in shady corners, and plenty more butting up against one another blindly on the dance floor. Just to feel something.

Finding an old, passed out krogan would be hard.

Finding the Charlatan, laughably easy.

She decided to avoid her problems, and go for the difficult task first.

The crowd parted easily enough when they realized that her armor wasn’t the intimate press of a turian’s carapace, and instead, the hard lines of someone armed, and uninterested in dancing altogether. Cutting her way through the first level, she took the stairs up to the second. And yet, no matter where she looked, no Drack. Every side room- even the occupied ones, with SAM’s intervention- every closet, bathroom, and individual nook and cranny were searched. She knew finding him would be difficult, but not impossible.

“Ryder?”

It was a soft, old voice that called out to her, and it had the inflection of vague discomfort. Asari, then. Sara turned to look over her shoulder, the red strobe lights turning her blue eyes violet. It had a similar effect on the scantily clad blue alien.

“Vidal says he has something of yours in his private room, and you’re welcome to come and fetch it.”

Of course. Sara ground her teeth and nodded. Then, paused, “Cele, right?”

“Yeah,” the asari raised a hairless brow, “Jim give you any more trouble?”

“Far as I know, he’s still in jail. He shouldn’t give either of us any more trouble.” The asari blinked, and for a moment, she actually looked saddened. But then, she shook her head, scratched at an arm full of needle pricks, and drifted back towards the crowd.

Sara didn’t have time for her little tragedies. She had too many big ones.

The door to Vidal’s private rooms opened as soon as she approached it, even though she knew the lock he had on it was an impressive one. Programmed for her, then. God- he’d _meant_ it. The look in his eyes had been genuine, and it would have been so much easier if he’d just been a bastard. He was- but _more_ of a bastard, maybe just concerning her affections. Couldn’t he just leave her high and dry?

“Sara,” and not be so damn welcoming, “I’m so glad to see you,” and charming, and _underdressed_. Just a soft poly blend shirt that clung too tight, and black pants with his usual boots. Where was his armor? Why couldn’t there be something more to him- where were his layers? She was hiding behind hers well enough, now that the dreamlike week had caught up with her, slapped her in the face, and laughed when she tried to run.

He’d gotten up from his usual spot on the wide, plush couch as soon as she came inside. He had a glass of something orange and fruity in her hand before she could blink- the bastard had her clocked the moment she stepped off the lift. Maybe sooner. And he guided her over to the couch like she wasn’t bristling with weapons and armor- like she wasn’t the pathfinder. Like she was a woman who’d told him _just_ yesterday she didn’t care who he was, and that she wanted him.

Damn it all to hell.

He settled on the couch next to her- Reyes did. Reyes. Not Vidal, not the Charlatan. He couldn’t be those things when he was all exposed skin and creases near his stomach and elbows in the soft material of his shirt. But his eyes didn’t miss her stiffness, the armor, the sword. They didn’t seem to mind, though, when he leaned over and kissed her.

And there went all her defenses.

The, ‘I said some things, you said some things,’ the, ‘you’re a crime boss, and I’m a pillar of humanity, guiding the whole of the Milky Way to a better future’, the, ‘I’m emotionally stunted but I probably love you and I’m willing to bet money you’re not okay with that kind of depth to whatever this is you’ve built between us because it was _you_ , you bastard- you did this. I didn’t flirt back, I didn’t kiss you.’

No, all that flew out the window, and she was leaning into the kiss, and moaning into his mouth, and the orange fruity drink was all but tossed aside so she could get ahold of his hair. And when he chuckled against her lips she absolutely lost it, and shoved her tongue into his mouth. His smug little grin was swallowed up in her kiss, and she relished the appreciative groan she drew from him. A long, low line of rumbling in his chest like an oncoming storm.

She hadn’t even said hello, damn it.

But here he was, begging her out of her armor with his fingers that had to find skin, and his lips that wished for more ground to cover. And what was refusal like, again? She couldn’t quite remember. She knew she was hitting the clamps on her armor, though, and he was peeling off her gauntlets, and she was kicking off her boots, and her chestpiece came off with a hiss and a ‘pop’!

Then with the clangs of the metal hitting the floor, she was crawling into his lap while he suckled greedily at the new skin open to him at her collar bone. He sucked bruises into it, lapping it up like a dog, and she had a grip on the back of his head that _dared_ him to stop.

He was like a vortex, drawing her in. She barely remembered her own name. It’d been like that since she met the man and that was why he was _so_ dangerous. Making her feel things- feel things. She felt things, for him. Love. Love was why she couldn’t do this because- Oh _god_ he palmed her ass through her skin tight leggings and she whined, high and breathy. He made a choked sound in response, and his fingers kneaded harder against the tight muscles.

“Reyes,” she managed, because _love_ , “Reyes, oh- _fuck_ ,” her words turned into a gasp and soon all she was doing was calling his name as he ground his hips up, and she felt his hard line of heat between her legs. He wanted her. But did he want her? Want her in the way she wanted him, like she hadn’t wanted someone before- want in the way that she could show him the little block of land she had on Eos, that looked over Prodromos, that looked over what she’d built. The want that would have him shaking hands with Scott, and grinning around the little kitchen in the Tempest with her ‘new’ family.

He rutted against her again, and her vision whited out. It’d been _such_ a long time. A nap, and six centuries. Not for him, though. Zia- Zia was dead but she’d been alive. Warm and willing and in his arms and _that_ was enough to put a stop to it.

Her hands hit his chest, and she was out of his lap in a second. She was across the room in another, pinned up against the wall by the force of her own abstinence, and heavy breaths with flushed cheeks and so much heat between her legs that she felt weak at the knees.

“Sara?”

And a very confused, perfect man on the couch, hard and aching- she could _see_ it- with lips that were puffy and swollen from her teeth worrying away at them.

“I just-” she started, then took a few gulps of air, filtered and stale, but not putrid like the rest of the slums, “I just. I, just,” her fingers tapped against the wall, “you are. I want. I- _fuck_.” She smacked a hand over her face. She’d talked to him all week, smooth, smart, witty and full of sultry smiles. Who was that woman? Where did she go? She was twenty two! She’d never been in love with a man! She’d died twice. Less of a robot each time she came back.

“I’ve got to go.”

And so she ran, armor scattered all over the floor at his feet.

  
  
  
  



	2. I'm longer to linger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey it's chapter two! I've done an embarrassing amount of writing on this fic in a very short time. So I'm submitting this so quickly because I'm a rash person and can't help myself. I hope you guys enjoy it.  
> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> Song inspo for this chapter: Dream a little dream of me, Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong  
> ...  
> Say nighty night and kiss me  
> Just hold me tight and tell me you miss me  
> While I'm alone and blue as can be  
> Dream a little dream of me

Of course he caught her before she could get to the door. 

Because running out into Tartarus in her under suit, without shoes, or any weapons was insane. Granted, he didn’t know about all her little super human tricks, but after fighting alongside her several times, he had to have an idea. So maybe he just didn’t  _ want _ her to leave. 

Well of course he didn’t. Look at him. 

Sara looked at Reyes Vidal. 

She met his eyes for the first time since she walked into his room- and that was a mistake. She saw confusion there, but heat, too. He had such lovely eyes, the color of amber glittering out in the sun. They were like cat eyes, and they had little lines around the corners from how often he smiled. High color in his cheeks, now, but he wasn’t smiling. He was trying to catch his breath from what she’d done to him, and his little sprint to stop her at the door. He was fast, and she could be faster. His grip on her arm was sure, not to hurt, but she could hurt him. 

Sara didn’t want  _ anyone _ to hurt this very bad man. 

“Wait just a moment,” he finally said in more a whoosh of breath than a sentence. It was clear he was trying to get his bearings. “You’ll forgive me if I’m a bit confused, Sara,” he said with an attempt at a smile, to cover up his vulnerability. “But where exactly are you intending to go?”

It was a good question, she’d give him that. One she wasn’t prepared to answer. His tentative gaze felt like the magnifying glass. And Sara an ant. Shrivelling and burning. 

“I don’t know,” she blurted, honestly, still breathing just as hard as when he’d first touched her. “Not here.”

His expression shuttered minutely, but SAM caught it. Sara had gotten very good at reading people- like books, really. She could see it all, and it’s why she was  _ so _ angry at herself for not catching him sooner.

“Have I offended?”

“No!” She said too quickly, pushing towards him, suddenly, her hands on his chest so his released her arm- because she was a toddler with no control of her emotions. He blinked in surprise at the abrupt change. “No,” she repeated, “it’s not you. I just-”

He smiled wryly, something hard in the corners of his lips, “It’s you, right? ‘It’s not you, it’s me?’ that’s an  _ old _ line, Sara. I gave you an out in the cave, yesterday.”

“Alright it  _ is _ you, but it’s me, too,” she hurried, patting her hands against his chest in irritation. It was akin to a kitten swatting at a toy, and his smile softened just a bit. 

“Are you breaking up with me?”

“Are we  _ together _ ?”

He sighed, heavily. 

Gently prying her hands off his chest, he coaxed her back to the couch. Soft words, soft eyes, and he got her to perch on the edge of her seat. 

Then he handed her the fruity drink again, with a quirk of his lips, “I wondered when this would happen. You’ve put on a remarkable show, thus far- as have I; we are two very talented actors. But you had to break some time, just like I had to show you what I was. It was simply a contest to see which would happen first and become the catalyst for the other.”

Sara downed half the drink in one gulp. The sugar smacked into the back of her throat and sizzled all the way down. SAM compensated so she didn’t choke and gag on  _ whatever _ it was, but she still made a face. Reyes raised a brow, and she cleared her throat, motioning for him to continue. He’d done most of the talking in their relationship thus far, anyway. 

“Sara, I’d be willing to bet you’ve rather jealously guarded that heart of yours.”

She nearly spat out her drink. 

He continued as if she hadn’t, “And I mean to make no assumptions about your feelings, only to clarify mine. As I said; I wish to bare all to you. You know my greatest secret, but almost nothing else about me. I’m willing to tell you everything, and do whatever you wish of me. You’ve an unfortunately large sway over me- I hope you know this. The things you could get me to do…” he shook his head, his eyes moving away from her as he chuckled ruefully, “Perhaps I am thankful you are who you are.” 

Her mind was spinning. All she could think of was the way his eyes had darted to hers  _ right _ before the sniper pulled the trigger. There was a question, there. Then Sloane had dropped dead, and he had his answer. 

‘ _ Bang _ ’. 

The shot had missed Sloane, she knew. It hit her heart instead. The blood had run down her chest and stained her belly red with him. Even now she could feel the heat of it, dribbling from the open wound he’d left on her. His words only made it gape wider. 

“You haven’t answered my question,” she informed him with staccato tremors in her voice. Then she downed the rest of the drink, ignoring the burn. 

“I’m a roundabout kind of guy, this you should know by now,” his grin turned catlike, and her bare toes curled against the steel floor. 

“Reyes,” that sounded like more of a whine than she intended, and his smile only widened. He was torturing her, and he liked to see her writhe in plenty of ways. But after a moment, he slowly scooted over to her side of the couch- careful to make sure she didn’t bolt again- and took her hand in his. 

His fingers weren’t nearly as calloused as she thought they’d be. They were long and smooth, copper toned like the rest of him, with neatly trimmed nails and pushed cuticles. She hadn’t actually seen much of his hands, as he’d always worn gloves around her. But his thumb swept across her knuckles, and she marveled at them, now. What a spell he had on her. 

“I want to be ‘together’,” he answered, tipping his head to the side as his voice deepened. “There. A straight answer. I give those to precious few. It should let you know you’re special.”

“I’m the Pathfinder,” she said weakly. “I can’t stay here.”

“And I’m the Charlatan,” he said with a shrug, “I don’t have to.”

Her eyes widened and her heart skipped a beat, “ _ What _ ?”

“I’m saying I’m all in,” he said firmly, gripping her hand a little tighter, “I rule from the shadows, remember? They don’t have to be piss stained Tartarus shadows- they can be any shadows. No one knows I’m in charge, and the real front is quite competent enough that I’d be running the Collective more than Kadara if I stayed here. Eventually, I’d just move out to Draulir, and squat in a cave somewhere- what I’m  _ saying,  _ Sara, is I’m portable, if you want me to be.” 

Her head was short circuiting, and SAM asked if she was alright. 

“I’m fine,” she said out loud, and got a funny look from the man who’d just poured his heart out to her. 

A moment of silence passed, and he could see she wasn’t going to say anything else. His expression loosened until he was chuckling, and he reached over to push an errant twist of black behind the pale shell of her ear, 

“Have I broken you?”

_ Yes _ . She was screaming in her head. He’d just opened up an entirely new realm of possibilities. Maybe he  _ would _ want the little plot of land over Prodromos. Maybe he could meet Scott. He wanted to be on the Tempest with her- he wanted to  _ be _ with her, ‘together’. Too much. She’d clung to love and denial and he’d ripped it out from under her so she had nothing but the full, confusing force of her feelings to deal with, now. 

And there was nowhere to run. But damn it she could squirm. 

“Do you have my krogan?” The question had popped out of her lips without any grace or preamble, but she could see he expected it now. He had the expression that someone gave a particularly stupid baby when it tried to babble its first words far too late in its development. 

“I do,” Reyes said with a nod, giving her hand a squeeze before he turned, and craned his neck to see around the corner leading further into his rooms, “I don’t think he’s awake, though. If the thunderous snoring is any indication. You know it took two other krogan and an Angara to get him up here? Your man is something special.”

Eternally grateful for the change in subject, Sara tried to figure out how to speak again. 

“I know how to wake him up, don’t worry.”

 

* * *

  
  


Pathfinder duties had never been more of a blessing. 

Once Drack had his suit’s coolant systems redirected to his crotch on full blast, he was up and moving with more than a grumble or two to say about it. It was much easier to avoid talking to Reyes about feelings with a crotchety old man wandering about the room, scratching his armored ass. And as Sara suspected, he was the perfect way to get out of Tartarus emotionally unscathed- well, more than she already was.

Drack and Vetra went out to the market with Gil that evening, and Sara had plenty to look over in the meantime. Reyes had thrown her a bone, and sent her all the data she’d need to transfer over to the Nexus. Addison emailed her back so shockingly quick that Sara jumped at the ‘ping’ of her response. Colonists would be in Kadara port the day after tomorrow. 115 people- while the outpost itself would be run by a mining corporation from Mars. 

Thankfully, Sara had spent days crawling all over the hills and sulfur springs outside Kadara port. There was plenty of room for an outpost, and she had stuck her finger at a random point on the map to choose. Now that the springs were clean, no longer laced with acid, it was more a paradise down there if one could ignore the vast criminal presence. But hopefully, that would be taken care of soon. 

Sara spent the next day holed up in her quarters in her pajamas, which were also her civvies, with Mittens skipping around behind her, and occasionally on her, answering emails and catching up on the correspondence she’d not had time for when she was dealing with Sloane and the monoliths. But not the emails from Scott. Those sat untouched. 

It was the end of the day before she crawled out of her quarters, hair greasy and mussed, intent on the showers. 

“Hey, Ryder!”

_ Damn _ it.

Sara turned to look over her shoulder, towel clutched to her chest like a lifeline. Peebee was making her way down one of the ladders. The asari was in casual dress, which for her, wasn’t much clothing at all. And no shoes. It was freezing on this ship and Sara didn’t know how the woman did it. Maybe the scales helped. 

“Hey,” Peebee said again, grinning as she slung an arm around Sara’s shoulders without preamble, “we should go get drunk tonight.”

A tempting offer, but she’d need an explanation, “Are we celebrating something?” 

“Hell yeah!” Peebee hooted and let go of her, planting her hands on her hips, “Tomorrow is gonna be boring. Wandering around the outpost setup, talking to scientists and  _ normal _ people,” she shuddered at the thought and Sara very nearly laughed at the sight, “so tonight we gotta get  _ wasted _ to compensate.”

While on any other occasion, Sara would accept, she’d been doing a very good job of hiding away on her ship and staying out of the bars that her- her something or another that might be someone she had relations with- ‘together’- frequented. She wasn’t about to break that streak for Peebee.

“Not feeling up to it tonight,” she said stiffly, stepping around the Asari, “why don’t you ask Liam? I think he’s already out at Kralla’s song with Vetra anyway.”

Peebee pouted, but in the end it was about getting drunk, not who she did it with. Sara began to worry she was travelling with a crew of alcoholics as the little blue woman skipped off, not specialists. 

She shook her head and stepped into the bathroom. 

Once she was clean, she waved to Lexi at the research station, and wandered up to the vid comm channel. Earlier in the day she’d gotten a request from the new mayor of Ditaeon, the Kadara outpost in the making. The blocks weren’t even fully setup yet, and the man apparently had an urgent message for her. This was why she liked to leave early…

“Pathfinder, glad to meet you face to face- well, sort of,” the mayor said grimly as a shaky video of his craggy face popped up on screen. Sara gave him her best approximation of a smile as he introduced himself, “Christmas Tate, it’s a pleasure.” 

She didn’t even let her lips twitch. To each their own, they were in a different galaxy with a bunch of aliens- his name was  _ not _ the weirdest-

She heard Lexi smothering a laugh downstairs. 

Sara nodded and hastily spoke up to cover it, “Mister Tate, what can I do for you? Inspection’s tomorrow.” 

“Yeah, that’s the thing, Not sure this outpost is gonna work out.”

Sara’s spine straightened out and her eyes narrowed. He must have detected her change in demeanor even through the shitty quality of their connection, because he continued on without prompting, “Ain’t the criminals or the soil. Those I was prepared to deal with. Giant monsters and cults that worship them? Not so much. You’ll need to take care of that before I move civilians in tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry?” Sara leaned a little closer to the screen, “You’re going to have to run that by me again.”

  
  


Reyes, to his credit, didn’t flinch when Sara stormed into the room and slammed a data pad down on the table in front of him. He looked guarded, and a little curious, but he wasn’t frightened of her. A tiny part of her wanted him to be.

“You said Kadara was viable as an outpost, now.” The accusation in her tone was impossible to miss. 

“It is,” one of his brows ticked up higher than the other, and he slowly sat forward in his seat. He was in his exosuit now, collar smoothed, hair gelled- armor. Layers. Easier to deal with. Vidal, not Reyes. Charlatan. His eyes flicked down to the datapad, “But I’m guessing there’s trouble on that data pad.”

“You would have had me march a hundred people to their death,” Sara hissed fists clenched at her sides. “There’s a goddamn monster out in those hills- and you didn’t think it might be prudent to  _ mention _ something like that?”

He blanched, and that was satisfying.

It was hard to hear, but he scratched his cheek and might have muttered something like, ‘so you heard about that’.  It only made her angrier, and he could tell. So he put up his hands in a placating gesture, which wasn’t working, either. 

“Old Skinner isn’t hurting anyone- actively,” Reyes said smoothly, “except those idiot cultists that go up and worship it. The thing is out of the way and relatively peaceful. I didn’t think it would be something you had to worry about. Leave taking out things like that to the Nexus militia that will eventually arrive, yes?”

“You have your  _ own _ militia,” she ground out, then ran a hand irritably through her hair, scratching her gloved fingers along her scalp. Things just couldn't be easy. He wasn’t a good person, she had to keep reminding herself of that. He worked with the Angaran resistance because he was a  _ decent _ person, but he was still a selfish, greedy person.  

“With guns that wouldn’t even make a dent- hey, Ryder, where are you going?”

“I’m gonna go put down the big _fucking_ monster-thing,” she snapped over her shoulder, his door swiping open in front of her, “and make you feel like  _ shit _ .”

The door pulled closed before she could take a step, and she heard a harsh sigh from behind her.

“The ‘running away’, thing, is starting to get old, Sara.”

“I’m not running away,” this time, “I’m going to go take care of that Architect before it decides to body slam my outpost!”

Reyes had gotten to his feet, and while his expression was decidedly displeased, a hint of something else made the journey over his features. His crossed arms dropped to his side and he took a step around his table. To her credit, Sara didn’t back up. 

“Architect?” Reyes asked carefully, “Why do you call it that?”

“Because that’s what it is,” she muttered, prompting SAM in her head to hurry up with the door override. But Reyes had recently upped his encryptions- paranoid bastard. That, or he’d done some thinking on the fact that she had an AI in her head. Maybe it would deter him. Sara didn’t know if that was what she wanted, but right now it sounded good. 

“It’s Rem tech,” she continued, “big shit- it can generate other bots, terraform, stuff like that. But more than anything it's a big goddamn liability, and a tragedy waiting to happen. I can’t, in good conscience, let my settlers cozy up next to it.” 

“You’ve seen one before,” and he was still stepping closer, careful, but aching for proximity. She could tell; she felt that way too. His lips had been fresh on hers from a dream that morning. They’d been slow dancing in a star field, and he’d been whispering just  _ terrible _ puns in her ear. She was doomed. 

“On Eos, it was messing around with the water supply. I set seismic hammers and the thing popped out of the ground like a big, deadly jack in the box,” she said, trying to unlock her jaw as he took  _ another _ step toward her. “They aren’t impossible to kill. I have a team of trained specialists. But a militia could do it too- even a two-bit band of pirates.”

“Smugglers,” he corrected, very much in her space, now, “most of which are soft touch, Ryder. I won’t throw them at Old Skinner like cannon fodder. I’m sorry, but no deal.”

“I didn’t expect anything else,” the amount of venom in her voice was a little more than she expected, but he didn’t let it show if it hurt, “which is why I’d like to leave, and take care of it myself.”

He pushed her up against the door. 

Whatever she was going to say died in the back of her throat, and dropped down into her stomach, rendering her effectively mute. 

His hands were on her hips, his knuckles brushing the steel door behind her, and she felt the press of the metal and leather of his suit up against the thinner portions of her armor. Not to mention his breath washing over her cheek. He was so close, and Tartarus’s low lighting turned his eyes red. There was something in his face that hadn’t been there a moment before. 

“You’re talented,” he murmured, his eyes flicking down to her lips, “deadly, and so very stubborn, my dear. But you aren’t immortal.” Reyes leaned down, letting his nose trail along her jaw, relishing her shudder.

She heard the door locks behind her click as his lips pressed hard to the soft skin just below her ear. Her gasp was loud, but the music that flooded into the room drowned it out as he got his teeth involved with her skin. The hot press of his mouth was like a brand, and when he pulled away, she missed it intensely. 

But he licked his lips, and pulled his hands away from her so she stumbled out into the night club. He stood there in the doorway like a darkened specter, eyes glowing red, teeth glinting white when they peeked from his clever mouth.

“Come back to me, Sara. We still have much to discuss.”

The door shut in her face, and it was all Sara could do not to scream. 

 


	3. Fracture

* * *

 

Fighting felt good. 

After days of being locked up, confronted with confusing feelings and distressing realizations, the bark of her rifle and the flare of her biotics felt cathartic. 

Drack went roaring past her, running headlong into a Nullifier, headbutting it so hard the flowmetal dome cracked open, and glittering Rem fluid burst out. The krogan pushed it back and laid two slugs from his shotgun into it, before turning to his next target. 

So at least Sara knew the feeling was mutual. To some. 

“Ryder, it’s coming around at your six!” 

Liam’s voice jerked her attention to her left where a laser laden coil was indeed barrelling around the corner of her boulder cover. She put out a hand, and the appendage slammed into a glowing biotic barrier. The barrier shuddered with the force, and a tiny spark of pain lit up the back of her skull where her amp lived. SAM clamped it down, flooding her system with the chemicals she needed to ignore it. The barrier broke, and a hail of bullets had the coil backing up. 

“Engineer profile,” she muttered, and felt that strange shift in her head. The electricity sparking through her blood was snuffed out, and her brain opened up to tens of millions of new possibilities. The visor filled with mathematical readouts snapped over her eyes, and Sara suddenly knew the exact path the coil would take for its second strike. 

She had a gout of flames ready for it, this time. 

The Architect screeched in pain, but she was already a vanguard by time it caught sight of her again. 

“Concentrate fire on its right corner leg,” she said over the comms as the air around her shuddered and swayed with dark energy, “I’m going for the left.” 

Drack and Liam’s fire swerved, and Sara opened up a tunnel of energy. The charge flung her through the air so reality bent around her, and when she came out, she slammed into the glowing conduit on the Architect’s leg so hard, it cracked. It wailed, but she grabbed a foothold and pressed her rifle up against the creaking glass. 

The world lit up with sharp thunder as she poured bullets into the conduit, and the leg snapped beneath her. 

Soon the Architect was on its knees, Liam’s arm was bleeding too much, one of Drack’s plates was wrenched out of place, and Sara tasted blood in her mouth as her nose and ears bled. It was probably just the fallout from overstressing her amp. That’s where the nosebleeds usually came from. The ears were new. And she felt a little fuzzy.

But she interfaced with the downed monster, and it took off into space as if it’d never haunted its corner of the springs in the first place. 

She stood there, breathing heavily for a moment, and coughing when flecks of blood hit the back of her throat. 

“You alright, Pathfinder?” Liam said through gritted teeth as he and Drack limped over to her. SAM was already racing through her system, repairing the damage, but she turned to nod at him anyway. He applied a medigel pack to his arm, and a dose of painkillers into his life support, while Drack messed with the wobbly plate. Lexi would have to take a look at that. 

“What a fight,” The old krogan said with a fierce grin, “That one was feisty. Better than its worm cousin on Eos.”

“I wasn’t there for the Eos fight,” Liam said with a shake of his head, “but I can’t imagine that there was much a difference between the two. I put them both in the ‘shitshow’ category.” Drack laughed at that, and pounded Liam on the back. The sound he made in response might have been high enough for dogs to catch. But after a moment, their attention was drawn back to Sara. 

She was staring out at the sulfur springs, a glazed look in her eye, blood still tumbling down from her nose, and from her ears. 

SAM came over the open comms, then, 

“I would suggest quick transportation to Outpost Ditaeon, and Dr. Nakamoto, Specialists Nakmor and Kosta. The pathfinder will collapse in-”

Liam was quick enough to catch her when her knees gave out. 

“What happened?” He asked frantically, looking down at her eyes that began to roll back in her head.

“It would appear that her close proximity to the conduit explosion and the resulting electromagnetic pulse has dislodged her biotic amp. One of the tines connecting the device to her spinal implant is bent, and the frequency it is stuck on is having an adverse effect on her-”

“Alright!” Liam snapped, hauling Sara up, with help from Drack, and hurrying toward the Nomad, “SAM, you call ahead to Dr. Nakamoto- tell  _ him _ all that shit, I don’t have time for it!”

They loaded the shuddering, jerking pathfinder into the Nomad while Drack took the wheel, and Liam held her hand, looking down at her with wide eyes, “Not another one, goddamnit. Heleus isn’t taking another one.”

 

* * *

 

 

“For the fifth time, Miss Harper, Ryder will be  _ fine _ .”

Cora wasn’t having it, and her stubbornness was verging on embarrassing. Liam didn’t know much about doctors outside of Lexi, but he  _ did _ know they didn’t like it very much when people outside their profession tried to tell them what they knew. 

“She doesn’t look fine,” Cora insisted, anyway, arms crossed. 

The three of them stood outside a shut door that led to the pathfinder’s temporary quarters in Kadara outpost: Ditaeon. Inside, Lexi and SAM were going over Dr. Nakamoto’s charts, while the man himself had to deal with Ryder’s overbearing mother. At least Vetra and Jaal had been sensible about things. They were downstairs nosing about the labs and bothering researcher Cartar. Of course, they wouldn’t leave the vicinity of the building, which said something. It was better than harassing the medical staff, though. 

“Cora, maybe we should,” Liam started. But she shot him a venomous look, then pinned the little doctor again. The man wasn’t overly ruffled. He’d been running a clinic out of a storage unit for months now, tending to criminals and junkies. Cora was all pressed clothes, neatly trimmed hair and  _ Initiative _ tattooed across her forehead. She was about as frightening as a wounded turtle. Liam almost wanted to warn the man that the woman was an Asari huntress. But he didn’t. 

“You give me an ETA wakeup, and I leave you alone,” she growled at the man, “it’s not that hard. If she’s going to be fine, ‘going to’ suggests a future date in which the event will occur.”

A religiously targeted expletive was her response, as the doctor dragged a hand down his face, “Give her twenty four hours. If she’s not awake by then, we know we’ll have a problem. But she’s died twice, and from what Dr. T’Perro told me, been through much worse in the way of injuries.” Then, without another word, Dr. Nakamoto disappeared back into Ryder’s room. 

Before Liam could say anything, Cora rounded on him, and primly informed him , 

“I don’t like this.”

“Well,” he started. But she continued,

“I don’t like what Kadara’s done to Ryder.”

He came up dry on that one. 

Cora pulled him away from the door and walked him down the steps until they were outside. Kadara always had a vaguely acidic taste in the air- the springs, anyway. The port just smelled like shit. But the springs smelled like someone was holding a lemon up to Liam’s nose and telling him it was his new breather. It was unsettling. 

But it  _ was _ beautiful. 

They stood outside the hilltop block house, and looked down at the rest of the buzzing outpost. It was spread out over a radius of several miles, around a grouping of especially pure, deep springs that were a good source of freshwater, and easy to till soil for crop production. The colonists had been unloading for the entirety of the previous night when Liam and Drack had all but run them over in the Nomad in their haste to get Ryder to the doctor. Now, the following afternoon, there were people everywhere. Humans, Asari, Salarians, Turians, Krogan, and even Angara. It was a pleasing sight, and it felt like they were winning. But Cora had other opinions, apparently. 

“She was going solo too much last week,” Cora said with a shake of her head, leaning against the railing, “and she shouldn’t have. I know she’s in charge- but ever since Scott woke up, she’s been off.”

“You mean, ever since she  _ died _ again,” Liam pointed out, coming to lean next to her, looking out at the too-blue water. 

“That’s part of it,” Cora gave him that one, “but her dad died a few months ago. Her brother was in a coma. And we all expected her to be okay with it. With having an AI very suddenly living in her head- putting the pressure of the entire Initiative on her. Hell, we even let her deal with that snake Tann on her own. Then, we get to Kadara, and she says she wants to run solo missions, and no one questions it!”

“Well,” Liam shifted uncomfortably, “Ryder’s always been able to handle herself. Why’re you focusing in on this?”

Cora’s lips tightened for a long moment, and she looked away. 

Then, “I know it’s none of my business. Not really. But I feel like it is. Liam- didn’t you notice her neck?”

He blinked at her, as to say; no, he didn’t. 

“There was a bruise, there.”

“She just got beat to shit by Rem tech.”

“Ohmygod,” Cora groaned, “Liam-  _ no _ . A- ugh. A hickey.”

Silence. Heat in his cheeks, uncomfortable shifting and clearing of throats, then, “You know, you’re right. That really isn’t any of our business.”

“Liam!” Cora insisted, glaring over at him, her hands flexing against the railing, “I don’t give a damn if Sara wants to sleep with someone. She’s a grown ass woman- younger than me, yes, but she can still make her own decisions. I’m worried that she’s getting involved with someone dangerous, though. It’s  _ Kadara _ . What kind of men do you think are down there? She’s been more reclusive than usual, and acting strangely, not letting any of us come with her when she’s got boots to the ground. And now this. Something’s not right.”

“So, what?” He was  _ really _ really wishing he were anywhere but in this conversation. This was something Cora should be talking about with Peebee, or Vetra, or Suvi or Lexi or hell- even Jaal. “What are we supposed to do? Wag our fingers at her- and say, ‘No, bad Ryder! No exiles for you!’”

“You are useless,” Cora informed him, shrugging away from the railing. 

He let her get a few yards before calling after her, “Stop creeping on other people’s love lives!”

 

And yet, that whole ‘creeping’ thing, seemed to be what Liam was doing with his day. 

He didn’t mean to, not really. 

But SAM informed him that an unmarked, suspiciously scrubbed shuttle was inbound for the outpost. Well, SAM informed all of them. But the others played it off as the Collective and exile contacts Mayor Tate was setting up for the outpost. They were bound to get a lot of shady traffic here, it was inevitable. 

But, call it Cora making him paranoid, or whatever got him to sleep at night- Liam had a gut feeling. He always went with his gut feeling. It’s what got him through crisis response, and had been his main asset in his HUSTL days. 

So, creeping was what he did.

Liam situated himself to lean casually against the wall of an upper level block house where there was a conveniently placed plant blocking him from view to anyone on the lower levels, but affording him a good lookout position in regards to the shuttle landing pad. He waited there for an hour until the unmarked shuttle came into view over the crags on the horizon- the sun was just beginning to set, and it made spotting the dark blob coming through the vibrant light easy enough. 

“SAM, what read can you give me on our scrubbed friend?” He muttered, arms crossed over his chest as the visor he’d hooked behind his ear bloomed over his eyes and zoomed in on the ship speeding ever closer. 

“The make is a UT-47 Kodiak drop shuttle, Mr. Kosta,” SAM said in his ear, “it appears to be commandeered from the Nexus, perhaps during the uprising, but may have also been liberated from other outposts in the Heleus cluster. All information from its databases has been deleted, and any identifying marks erased.”

“Well, an Angaran wouldn’t be using a Kodiak,” Liam muttered to himself, “not one that the Nexus didn’t provide for outpost transport. This will be a Kadaran, then. An exile?”

“There are four life signatures onboard, Mr. Kosta. One Angaran, and three humans.”

“Hmm.”

“My data is limited on the humans, but it would seem that the Angaran is one Keema Dohrgun, the Collectively allied and Resistance contact ruler of Kadara port.”

Liam’s brows ticked upward, “Sloane Kelly’s replacement? The Angaran Ryder put in power just a few days ago? What is she doing here…” he leaned over the railing as the shuttle landed, forgetting subtlety altogether. 

The Angaran woman in question did indeed step off the shuttle, looking around in the fading light at the fresh new buildings dotting the hillside. Whatever she saw must have impressed her- and considering she lived in a crowded garbage heap like Kadara port, Liam couldn’t blame her. Behind her, two men and a woman stepped off the ship as well. They were all armed, and wearing indiscriminate colors with no patches of allegiance. Exiles, possibly Collective, more than likely just guards. 

The little group made their way off the shuttle pad, and the turian requisitions officer that Liam was beginning to think could be ten places at once, Dru Senecas, came out to greet them. He led them into one of the nearby buildings- the hospitality outpost and processing port, Liam thought. Registering the visitors. But  _ why  _ were they here? Surely it couldn’t be because of the Pathfinder. She couldn’t know the woman all that well. 

Still, he didn’t like leaving things up to chance. He was just about to tap something out onto his omni tool- when movement caught his eye. 

Liam narrowed his eyes and peeked back around the plant to see- holy shit! One of the human men that’d accompanied Dohrgun had slipped out the back door of the hospitality block, and was making his way slowly and casually down the adjoining alley, as if he belonged in the outpost. No one noticed a thing. 

“Oh no you don’t,” Liam muttered, “SAM, who is that man?”

“Unknown.”

That brought him up short. Liam paused, “What do you mean ‘unknown’?”

“Distribution of information concerning that individual has been blocked, Mr. Kosta.”

“By  _ who _ ?” 

“The Pathfinder.”

Liam’s mouth fell open as he looked down at the man who was already beginning to fade into the crowd. Unassuming, but there was definitely a pistol on his hip. And he’d come in on a data scrubbed shuttle, with a Collective affiliated force. 

“Oh  _ hell _ no,” Liam growled, and vaulted over the railing till his boots hit the dark Kadaran soil. He could get lost in a crowd, too. And he wasn’t about to let this shifty bastard get away from him. 

 

They took a long, meandering trail through the outpost, and had this man been anyone else, Liam could have been convinced that it was nothing more than sightseeing. He made several stops. By the research building, roping Nessi Cartar into a pleasant chat that Liam stayed close enough to listen in on. The man introduced himself as Shena, and said he was an exile looking for a second chance- that he’d heard Christmas Tate was taking in men like him. He’d come here with his wife and children and-  _ Bullshit _ . 

But his sob story got Cartar talking. She told him all about the sulfate mining and the soil and fertilizer experiments- turning Kadara into a profitable and stable agricultural colony. He ate it up, looking convincingly wide eyed and interested. Then, he thanked her and moved on. As soon as he got around the corner, the mask fell away into quiet observation once more. Liam was getting coiled up like a spring, and he went over the comms, quietly,

“Hey Jaal.”

“Kosta! Where have you been all afternoon? Gil Brodie is setting up a poker game in Ryder’s block. You must come join-”

Liam shook his head, keeping this ‘Shena’ in his sights, “Busy, Jaal. Hey, what do you know about Keema Dohrgun?”

“The Collective ruler of Kadara? Not much. She is a resistance affiliate, and something of a grey area. Why?”

“Well, she’s come to pay the outpost a visit,” Liam muttered, slipping through a little crowd of moody colonists, still fresh from cryo and chafing at the strange climate of Kadara as much as he was. “I think she’s casing the place. She’s got a Collective operative running around the whole of Ditaeon, spouting a fake story, and looking very much like he’s mapping weak points.”

“What?” Jaal sounded serious now, “Why would she- Hold on a moment, let me inform the others-”

“No no, don’t make a fuss!” Liam insisted, “I just need another set of eyes on this. You all are in Ryder’s block. Stay there, stay sharp. I’m gonna keep following him. SAM refuses to give me any info on him, so I’ve gotta do this the old fashioned way.”

There was a pause, then, Jaal came back, “Would this human happen to have dark hair, and skin? Yellow eyes?” 

“Yes? How did you know that?”

“Drack has just informed me- after listening in on our conversation, that he has come into contact with such an individual. The night that he was rendered unconscious in the slums bar, Tartarus, he awoke in an unfamiliar room, and that same human was there, with Ryder. Apparently, SAM would not give Drack any information on him then, either. But Ryder seemed familiar with him.”

Liam cursed through his teeth. A slums bar? This didn’t spell anything good. Cora might be overly paranoid about Ryder’s romantic entanglements- but it was entirely within the realm of possibility that Sara had bitten off more than she could chew with the Collective in helping them to topple the Outcasts. She could be in deep shit with this ‘Shena’, and refusing to tell the others because of...Pride? Loyalty? Liam couldn’t be sure. But he  _ did _ know that he wasn’t about to let this asshole get the jump on Ryder, their new outpost, or any of his friends. 

“I’d say that’s suitable cause for me to bring him in, wouldn’t you?”

“I would have to agree. Shall Drack and I meet you at the retention cells?”

“Count on it.”

Liam cut the comm, and powered up his combat systems. The dull orange glow on his cuffs was a comfort as he straightened. It was apprehension, now, and he wouldn’t bother with hiding-

Shit. 

Where’d he go?

Liam’s eyes widened as they raced around the darkening streets of Ditaeon. But even as they emptied, there was still no sign of Shena. He’d had eyes on him the whole time, he’d barely looked away for even a second! 

He whirled around in a circle, and as soon as his back was to a wall, a hand slipped over his mouth, and he heard the hum of a pistol powering up as metal touched his lower back. 

“I’m flattered by all this attention,” a deep, accented voice said in his ear as his captor made Liam step back into the shadows, “but I’m really trying to keep a low profile here. You’re making that rather difficult, following me around like you are.”

Something was on the hand over his mouth. 

It burned Liam’s nostrils as he was forced to inhale, and his lips where the poly-leather of the glove clamped down. It began to blur his vision, and turn his limbs to jelly. The man behind him had no trouble holding him up, though. 

“The window of time I have here is small, and you will waste it no longer. Sleep well.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I knocked Ryder out of commission for most of this chapter, and I'm pleased with writing her overbearing, overly suspicious crew. I'll clarify a few things in case there's any confusion.  
> In the game, when you get to Kadara, if you're running around the port, none of your companions are with you. A lot of talking and missions can take place like this, and given Reyes' nature I figured that would extend to the slums. I'm pretty sure he wanted to remain under the radar, and would trust Ryder, but not anyone else. So in *my* little world, Sara and Reyes went on the missions that took them out in the Sulfur springs alone. So basically, none of her crew know who he is.  
> Secondly, Jaal will recognize the 'Shena' codename, and a lot of trouble could have been avoided if Liam had thought to mention it.  
> -Also, could Reyes just politely inform Liam of who he was and why he was there? No, of course not. That would be too easy. 
> 
> Anywhosen, we're nearing canon divergence when it comes to Reyes, so I hope ya'll stick around to see what I've got planned!  
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting! I read all your lovely messages and they give me life, and inspiration!


	4. fly with me

* * *

 

When she and Scott were both ten, and in school on the Citadel, Sara had gotten kicked in the face. 

She got into a fight with another human girl who called Sara’s turian friend Rasha, ugly. Sara, being the ever inflamatory one, had lashed out. As in, she’d bitten the girl’s arm. By time Rasha called the teacher, Sara had done substantial damage, and the girl was sobbing. When the teachers pulled them apart, the girl was so frantic and wild with pain that her leg had lashed out, and smacked into Sara’s face. 

Nothing was broken, but Scott had made fun of the big purple bruise across her nose for several days. He wasn’t naturally malicious, but he had a much cooler head when it came to confrontation, and she could tell that he’d been disappointed in her, and how little control she’d had of herself. 

Sara felt like she’d gotten kicked in the face, just now. 

Her eyes had this terrible pressure behind them, like her brain was trying to shove them out of her head. And her sinuses felt like they’d been filled in with cement. That numb, aching feeling that could bloom to shocking pain upon touch was familiar as a little girl’s boot connecting with her nose. 

But she knew it was a giant monster who’d steam rolled her with an electromagnetic pulse, and her amp that had done the damage. 

In short, she felt like shit. 

And she wasn’t alone. 

Her eyes didn’t have to open for her to get the layout. Sara heard voices in her head. Bouncing around through her neurons, patching and digging, recording and cataloging. A bug on a tray as much as a window for a higher being to peer through. She couldn’t remember if she always waxed poetic after brain injuries. 

_ SAM,  _ she asked inside her head,  _ where am I, and who is here with me? _

“Good evening, Pathfinder. You are in Kadara Initiative outpost Ditaeon. Reyes Vidal is sitting in a chair to your left.”

Of  _ course _ he was. 

‘Together’, huh?

He didn’t seem very concerned about that when he shoved her off to go fight the big monster thing. But that wasn’t entirely fair, she supposed. Not many people in their right minds would look at something like an Architect, then look at their tiny gun, and think, ‘yeah, let’s do this.’ She was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, when all she really wanted to do was hail Brodie over the comms and tell him to get the drive core online so she could get back to running from her feelings. She’d gladly face down the Archon again if it could  _ just _ get her out of having to open her eyes right now. 

“You’re thinking rather loudly, Sara,” he said softly, from somewhere in the darkness outside her mind. “I can see the smoke coming out your ears.”

Right, she made funny faces when she internally monologued too long. 

“What are you doing here?” She asked on the third attempt to speak, smacking her dry lips and trying to get her heavy tongue to move. She felt a needle in her arm, and heard the hum of medical equipment nearby. How bad had she been off? 

Terrible, apparently, if it got him out here. He was all about cloak and dagger, yet here he was, rather close to blowing whatever cover he went under these days. She was sure her crew was somewhere nearby. Clucking hens that they were. A reference wasted when only four of them would get it.

“Dr. Nakamoto said you were rather badly off.” Sure, why wouldn’t he have the slums doctor in his pocket? She should have seen that one coming. “He said it wasn’t life threatening- but, Sara…” he sighed, and paused. She heard the cushion in the chair creak, and the bed dipped next to her. 

She decided to open her eyes then. Mistake. Mistake.

No back tracking though, she couldn’t just shut her eyes and pretend he wasn’t here. 

He looked tired, his hair wasn’t perfect- that was a crime in itself- that gorgeous little strand hanging down in his eyes. And his eyes were troubled, gold to chocolate in the darkness of the little room. The lights were turned off for her rest, so he must have snuck in. He probably would have snuck in anyway. He was just that kind of guy. 

His gloved fingers touched her cheek. 

“I told you to come back to me,” He almost sounded accusing, but the worry in his eyes was just that. “You’ve never been very good at listening.”

“I listen fine,” she said with a rasp from sleep that had his fingers slipping back into her hair, and the furrow between his brows deepening, “when you bother to  _ tell me _ things.”

He smirked, “Still bitter about the whiskey?”

“Yeah, Reyes, it’s the fucking whiskey I’m bitter about.”

“I know, I know. You’re more of a vodka girl, right?”

“ _ Reyes _ .”

He sighed through his nose, and drew his hand back, setting it lightly on her hip, “You’re in your sickbed and you still want to argue about my criminal affiliations? I introduced myself as a smuggler, Sara, I’m not sure what more you wanted from a stranger.”

“You weren’t a stranger when you kissed me on those cargo crates,” she said, hurt simmering up around the base of her throat. She couldn’t hold his gaze, then, because she knew she sounded pathetic. Almost as pathetic as when she’d managed to get  _ jealous _ of his smuggler ex when she had no claim whatsoever on the man. That’d been a fun bout of humiliation. 

“I’m  _ sorry _ ,” he said, and the tension in his voice was drawn tight. She looked up at him, then, and his expression was open with frustration, now. “You said you could handle who I was. You said you wanted it- I don’t understand why-”

“It’s not about who you are,” well, it kind of was, but that was the secondary object, “it’s- it’s,” she struggled for a moment, “it’s just not a very good foundation to start a relationship on, alright? Wining and dining and dancing and being stupidly charming is fine- but you  _ lied _ \- it was lies on lies on lies. I  _ asked _ you about the Collective, the Charlatan- you lied to my  _ face _ ...”

“So you think I’m charming?” was apparently all he got from her attempt at honesty.

She gritted her teeth for a response, but suddenly pain skittered through the entirety of her face, circling around to put her head in a vice grip that centered in white hot agony around her implant. It simmered like flames, and each beat of her heart was someone banging them out into steel. 

He noticed her freeze, and the tension that turned every muscle in her body to stone. 

“Ryder? Ryder- Sara,” he bent down to take her face in his hands, eyes wide, “What’s wrong? Sara, what can I do?”

“It’s fine,” she choked out past the waves of pain blooming around her skull like flowers, “I’m  _ fine _ ,” a gasp of air into her lungs straightened out her spine and lifted her hips off the bed. But she curled her toes till her feet began to cramp and rode it out. She swam in and out of reality, sometimes it was him sitting by her bed, sometimes it was her father. Sometimes all she saw was the bright blue glow of the SAM node back on the Hyperion. 

But when she came back to herself, Lexi was standing over her, with Dr. Nakamoto on her other side. Reyes was nowhere to be found and Liam  was by the door, mildly furious with odd dark circles under his eyes. 

“Ah, you’ve come back to us,” Lexi let out a breath of relief, and it smelled like Suvi’s Earth tea. “Thank goodness. SAM stabilized your implant, Ryder. You should be fine, now. How do you feel?”

“I’m fine,” she managed, and actually meant it this time. She felt marginally better than before, but still very much like the Architect had kicked her in the face. “Hurts. But, I can think.”

“Thinking is good,” Nakamoto said with a wry smile, tapping something into the datapad in his hand. “Thinking means your higher cognitions are back online. You blacked out on us for a while and dipped into subconscious realms that were frankly, a little disturbing.”

Lexi swatted at the little man, then ran a few more checks and tests. Once it looked like she was about to clear off, though, Liam stepped forward.

“Ryder, we need to talk.”

“Kosta,” Lexi chastised in that mothering way she had, “do you really think now is the time?”

“It could have been an assassination attempt.”

Dr. Nakamoto rolled his eyes, “You Initiative types don’t get it on the first time, ever, do you? I keep telling you, Vidal wasn’t going to hurt her.”

“I said I wanted to talk to Ryder, not the two of you,” Liam snapped, unhappiness carving out his handsome face. 

Nakamoto shook his head, “You’ll need to do it quick, Vidal will be on his way back from the retention cells by now. I warned you, you couldn’t keep him there long.”

Liam said something along the lines of, ‘like hell he’s getting back in here’, under his breath, but the two doctors left, all the same. Once they were gone, he turned vaguely accusing eyes to Sara, who was still foggy on the entire situation. 

“You want to tell me who the hell ‘Reyes Vidal’ is, Ryder? Why he’s calling himself ‘Shena’- which Jaal tells me is an Angaran resistance contact- why SAM is locked on info access to him- and  _ why _ he was in your  _ room _ when you started freaking out and having brain spasms?”

“‘Brain spasms’?” Sara asked with a weak smile.

The glare he shot her probably would have been lethal, were he a biotic. 

Well, here was her chance. 

It was decision time. She could out him for the criminal he was- expose him like a raw nerve to the whole of the Initiative, discredit Keema Dohrgun and hand Kadara over to Christmas Tate- with Kandros’ strike teams heading up the charge. She could see it all play out, a clean sweep of the defenseless city, clearing out the trash, the junkies, the exiles and the murderers. What was it Reyes had said after Sloane died- cut off the head of the snake? He was the snake now. He’d built a careful house of cards, and she could bring it all crashing down. 

“ _ Together. I could go with you.” _

Love.

She was quite literally chained to a bed by medical red tape. There was no running. And she had to make a choice. 

“He’s going to be joining our crew on the Tempest,” Sara said in her best ‘Alec Ryder’ voice. The one where no shit would be tolerated. “He was a key player in finding the way to the Archon’s ship, taking out Kelly, and the founding of this outpost. I’d say he’s done more than most to earn his place in our crew. He’s an expert infiltrator, sniper, and recon specialist. He’ll be useful in the fight for Meridian.”

Liam’s mouth dropped open. 

Sara waited for the storm to hit. 

“Well shit.”

She peeked up at him, and Liam rubbed the back of his head, “I mean- he could have just  _ said _ that.” 

A raised brow was enough of a question for him to continue, “Shit, Sara, he knocked me out! I was tailing him through the outpost because he was acting shifty, and out of nowhere- I’m pretty sure it was the Kadara equivalent of chloroform.” 

Sara blinked at him. 

“Knocked me out cold. But I get it- types like him, they’re always careful. Probably didn’t appreciate the tail,” he rubbed the back of his head, “got me good, though. I’ll have to ask him about that chemical. I think we’ve got another bunk available. Tempest is getting pretty crowded though, right?” Liam laughed-but she saw something there. Something in the dark of his eyes and the set of his jaw.

Liam didn’t do ‘ _ forced’  _ very well.

“Maybe I’ll have to start sleeping on my couch. Wouldn’t be too bad- Peebs sleeps in an escape pod, anyway.”

He said his goodbyes, and left the room, too. 

On the surface, that interaction had gone smoothly. But he laughed too much and left too quickly and she knew. She’d seen Liam’s anger before- back when they played phone tag with the captain of the pirate ship they’d infiltrated. And there had been vestiges of it buried behind his words. She couldn’t really blame him.

“Chloroform, Reyes?” She muttered to the empty room, rubbing her temples. 

Neverending, Kadara.    
  


It was a  _ very  _ long few days before departure. 

She’d been released from her bed a few hours after she’d woken. Lexi and Dr. Nakamoto told her above all; no biotics. Other than that, just to keep to an easy and stress free environment. Sara wasn’t entirely sure if they were aware of what planet they stood on. All the same, she promised she would try.

Reyes had been surprisingly subdued when Sara informed him that he was due to report to the tempest in the three days before they were to depart. Of course, everyone had been around- and Reyes had been  _ cleaning them out _ in a poker game. Gil was flabbergasted, Vetra, furious, and Cora still refusing to bluff. Everyone else had already heard from Liam that Reyes would be joining the crew, so it wasn’t news to them. Apparently when he’d returned from the retention cells and everyone had realized that Christmas Tate let him out for a  _ reason _ , that he wasn’t bent on killing their Pathfinder. Somehow, that equated to getting invited to their nervous poker match. Sara had a hard time fathoming the minds of her crew.

Though, no matter what Liam had said to the others, or to Reyes himself- and how smoothly he’d played the information off-she saw the look in his eyes when she told him  _ herself _ . 

And his response had been nothing but a little quirk of a smile, and a, “Sure thing, Pathfinder.”

Nothing so grand as the confirmation he’d been seemingly given. The answer to the question he’d silently asked. ‘Do you want me as much as I want you? Do you want to be with me?’. She’d thought those were her lines, and it was  _ him _ who was going to have trouble committing. And here he was, steamrolling her with surprising amounts of willingness to...Be whatever they were. 

The ill defined lines of their pseudo relationship were stressing her out more than an ‘environment’ could- so to combat that, she threw herself into work.

She’d declined to join the poker game, and left them to make the rounds with Christmas Tate. Surprisingly, besides the big Rem tech monster in the hills, the outpost really didn’t need much else in the way of help. It was a hardy bunch of people they’d sent to Kadara. Farmers, miners, retired badasses like Pathfinder Rix. And at least that was one weight off Sara’s shoulders. She wasn’t just leaving these people to the wolves. 

The next day the crew packed it up back to Kadara port. They stayed docked longer to wrap things up as nicely as the crime ridden place would allow, as their next stop in this system wouldn’t be for some time- scheduled stop, that was. Often times, Ryder’s strange brand of luck had them streaking all over the cluster in circles and loop-de-loops. Kallo never stopped complaining about it, muttering about engine specs. Sara threatened to raise Gil on the comms, and that was usually enough to shut him up. 

Sara spent her time immersed in her work. Busy work, mostly- as Lexi promised to handcuff Sara to the bed if she even thought about pushing herself after so violent an episode.

She spoke to the Nexus embassy setting up in Kadara port. The asari managing it seemed a little frightened of the neighbors, but she had a swarthy Angaran guard who seemed as intent to woo her as protect her, so Sara figured she’d be fine. 

After that it was supply lines, requisitions, refueling, and wringing everything they could out of the port with the credits the Director had allocated for this mission- and the credits the Tempest was making on the side with lucrative mining operations and investments. But the Nexus didn’t really need to know about those, just yet. It was a costly operation they ran, and Alec Ryder wouldn’t have settled for living out of a shoe box- so neither would his daughter. 

And through all this time, Reyes was silent. 

His silence was a slow knife, twisting in her gut. 

Sara would see his eyes in the darkness of her room when she tried to sleep. She’d see the frustration that had begun to evolve into betrayal. She’d bastardized her love with all the fear that swirled around it. He was slow to trust, not as slow as she was, but slow enough. He said he’d seen through her, and still wanted what was underneath. Was the reciprocation of answering his offer not enough?

He was  _ leaving  _ Kadara for her. It had to be.

Or she assumed he was. He didn’t contact her until the last day- and even then it was through Vetra. Insofar as a mention that Vidal had boarded the ship earlier in the day while Sara was in the field, wrapping things up with the outpost. She wondered where he was setting up his ‘nook’ as everyone on the ship seemed to have their place of work and leisure. But Vetra had given her nothing but a shrug. 

So she’d upset him. That much was clear. 

And now he was on her ship, and they’d be taking off soon. Making peace would have to be a priority. She didn’t want the experience of Kadara- the whirlwind of  _ him- _ to be tainted by her unfortunate handling of the situation. 

Sara took a deep breath, and realized that she was  _ on _ the ship. It wasn’t that big of a place. However, it was a crowded place. Finding him was step one, finding privacy, step two- oh yes, come back to my quarters, Reyes, would go over  _ so _ well in front of her ogling crew. 

“SAM,” she said from her corner of the cargo bay, “Where is Reyes Vidal?”

“Unknown, Pathfinder.”

That brought her up short. 

“What do you mean you don’t-”

“He requested his location be kept hidden from you, for the time being.”

Sara felt betrayed, “Who’s side are you  _ on _ , SAM?”

“Given the circumstances, yours, Pathfinder.” Ominous answer. And he didn’t add anything else. She huffed, and felt a headache coming on. 

But all the same, she proceeded to subtly search the ship. Casually dropping by wherever a particular crewmate happened to be, knowing some of the sharper ones were well aware of what she was up to. The crew knew Ryder had a habit of ‘making the rounds’. In the first few weeks of the Tempest crew getting used to each other, she’d struggled with her new leadership. 

They didn’t know her, most didn’t respect her. So she came at it from a different angle, knowing she didn’t have the hallmark factor that her last name carried- it had been an ‘Alec’ exclusive thing, and she didn’t want to ride on her father’s coattails, anyway. Her angle was friendship, and thus far, it’d worked well. The entirety of the crew had showed her their soft underbellies- excluding Drack, because Sara doubted he had one. 

Manipulative. She and her brother shared that. 

They all knew Reyes would be next. He could try and stay independent, but eventually Ryder would get the dirt on him, and he’d be crying in her lap like everyone else. How little they knew...Their relationship had evolved beyond that  _ kind _ of manipulation. Now it was a tug of war on who would give up more ground first. He’d made a big concession, uprooting himself. 

Leaving his home and telling her what he wanted. Those were hits. And Sara had thrown it back in his face solidly- however, she liked to think that kiss when she came looking for Drack and ended up half naked in his lap had made up for some of her difficulties. She  _ knew _ it was a good kiss, damn it. But if the currency didn’t match up, she was still screwed. 

After an hour of looking, she was absolutely baffled on where the man could  _ be.  _ She’d checked the showers, even!

“Preparing for takeoff, Pathfinder,” Kallo came over the comms. “Destination; The Nexus.” 

“Loud and clear, Helmsman,” She growled back, and decided that if the bastard was hiding in the vents, he could damn well stay there. She needed her meds, and a nap. 

When she opened the doors to her quarters, intent on being sullen, the last thing she expected was his voice. 

“You neglected to tell me about the most important member of the Tempest crew.”

Sara nearly jumped out of her skin, and was absurdly glad that her weapons were upstairs in their lockers, and that SAM had disabled the profile usage until her implant and amp had time to reconfigure. A surprise intruder in her room- no matter how welcome- would have ended up spaced, with a big hole in her chameleon glass window.

But there he was, standing at the apex of her window wall, looking out over Kadara port, with Mittens cuddled up in his arms, making little musical purrs as Reyes petted him gently. 

The little spark of fire that lit on the back of her tongue begged her to demand where he’d been- why he disabled SAM-  _ how _ he disabled SAM from tracking his location. But she didn’t get the chance to, because Reyes was setting the pyjack down on the nearby armchair, and closing the distance between them. 

“First,” he rumbled as he drew close, “this.” She found herself gathered up into his arms- with exceeding care on his part- and pressed into the gentlest of kisses. It was all open mouthed breathy exhalations and familiarity. Even if their kisses still numbered in the single digits, it had the bubble of excitement with the foundation of  _ home _ . 

After too short a time, he pulled back to press his forehead to hers, sighing with no small amount of temperance in the tone, “I’m glad you’re alright. I know I didn’t have much a chance to show it- as I was surrounded by your crew,” he shook his head with a chuckle that belied the underlying stress her injury had caused him, “but that was  _ not _ a good day.”

He kissed her again, then, because he couldn’t seem to help it. Just as she was getting breathless, he pulled away again, “And  _ now _ we can talk.”

“We don’t  _ have _ to,” she mumbled, licking her lips with hooded eyes. She forgot for a moment what it was they even needed to discuss. If it was more kisses, she was all for it. But by the rueful chuckle, she supposed she was wrong. 

“I’m sensing a trend here with your restraint,” his hands wound around her hips to clasp at the small of her back. “First you can’t keep yourself from playing the little temptress in Sloane’s hideout, then, all but attacking me. In my  _ own  _ rooms at Tartarus, no less.” His affront was mocking, and it only made her want more. Why couldn’t things be easy like this all the time? 

“To settle the mood,” she grumbled, “I think you were mad at me.”

“No,” he said quietly, “not angry, Sara. I want you- I’m  _ here _ , so that much should be clear. I’ve made it glaringly apparent. But you’re giving me mixed signals.”

“I don’t like all the secrets.”

“My life  _ is _ secrets.”

“You said you wanted to ‘bare all’. What happened to that?”

“It doesn’t change the fact that the secrets exist, if you know them,” he warned, still refusing to pull away from her. If anything, he tugged her closer, her hips tight to his, an enticing friction that neither of them could ignore. That magnetism that drew them together was just as strong as it ever was. 

“You’ll have to learn to trust me. To look past the lies; knowing they were born of necessity.”

She considered his words. It made sense. She’d fallen for him before she knew he was the Charlatan, and her words in the cave had been instinctive more than anything else. She  _ didn’t  _ care about the title, she cared about him. And he cared that she cared- ‘ _ I liked the way you looked at me _ ’. 

She wondered what kind of way that’d been, before she knew. 

She tried to relax enough to remember. 

And when she opened her eyes to look up at him, they were filled with heat and promise and curiosity, and warning. 

“You think just because you’re here, I won’t burn you?”

He smirked, and one of his hands came up to cup the back of her skull. Slowly, his fingers fisted into her hair- she only noticed now that he wore those soft clothes, and had bare hands,  _ dangerous _ . He gave a testing tug, and after a moment of appraising eye contact, she tilted her head back to bare her throat to him. 

As expected, his lips found the mark he’d left. 

He brushed them down, soft as a feather kiss, and then swept them up to the shell of her ear, letting the pearls of his teeth scrape against the tender skin until she shivered. 

“Who said I minded the pain?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's your canon divergence! He's comin' along he's comin' along!  
> This was a bit longer than usual because I kept going back and adding to it as I wrote future chapters. Got some important foundation stuff here. Sara might figure out what's happening in her head...eventually.  
> ALSO, important thing.  
> There be smut in Chapter 5! Considering the content of the first chapter of this story, that might have been a oneshot when I first wrote it, I assume you guys are cool with this? I mean it's in the tags and the rating is appropriate. But I'm still kinda new to the smut game. What I've written is pretty chill compared so some stuff I've seen...But hey, lemme know if you're not cool with it, and I can put what to skip over in the notes next chapter!  
> Thank you all for reading! For the kudos and the bookmarks and yadda yadda. You all have been so very kind- this honestly could not be a better first story for me to get back into the fanfic game with. You guys have made it great and kept my inspiration running strong.


	5. all I want to be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, there's some smut ahead. You have been warned.

* * *

 

 

“So, you got SAM on your side, huh?” Sara muttered, tracing her finger up the line of his sternum, and then back down to his navel. 

A chuckle greeted her from the mass of pillows and mussed hair next to her. 

“It didn’t take me long to figure out how deeply you two are entwined. And he is an AI. AIs can be reasoned with. I reasoned that speaking with you privately would be best for everyone, he agreed.”

She was pouting, unashamedly at this point, and plucked at the taught skin of his abdomen vengefully, “And that makes more sense than a convoluted game of hide and seek. I  _ have _ a private channel with him, you know.”

“Ah, but that wouldn’t have been nearly as fun as watching you wander around for an hour from the comfort of your private terminal.”

“You-”

“EllenAlec634?  _ Not _ a very hard code to crack, Sara. It was  _ cute _ .”

She blushed wildly, and sat up in bed, the covers pooling around her naked hips as she glared down at him. He tossed her a lazy smile, his arms behind his head. In the low light of the room, with the gentle blue glow of the FTL trail outside her window, his eyes seemed to shine. Mischief colored his grin. 

“Did you get into my emails?”

“I’m nosy, not obsessive. Why, do you have spicy correspondence from a lover I don’t know about?”

“I would hope mutual exclusivity was implied in your ‘jealously guarded heart’ diagnosis,” she hissed, eyes narrowed. It was a statement, and a question. 

He laughed, tossing his head back in a carefree way she hadn’t seen from him yet. Soundproof walls, and the frankly  _ fantastic _ first time they’d just experienced had loosened him to bonelessness. Though the walk of shame to the showers would be interesting. 

“Emphasis on the ‘jealously’, apparently,” he managed past his chuckles. 

She huffed, and he reached an arm out to pull her tight to his side, “Possessiveness is a new trait in a lover of mine. I didn’t think it’d be something I’d prefer- but on  _ you _ , Sara Ryder, it is  _ adorable _ .”

She writhed around in his grip long enough that he knew the matter would not be so easily settled. It would need to be readdressed that she had no experience with relationships, and was coming from a disadvantaged background regarding them. But for now, his plan to handling it seemed to be heaping affection on her. 

She wasn’t complaining about that, at least. 

He rolled them over until she was pinned beneath him. The crisp, white sheets nearly blended in with her skin- but her inky hair bled out beneath her in a beautiful contrast. He looked down at her reverently for a moment, then reached to hike one of her legs up around his hips. 

She felt a stirring between them, and tossed back her head with a lip caught between her teeth. Those hips rolled against her, making his need more and more apparent with each coming of the tide. She returned the movement until she felt him brush against her, a question- was she ready for more? He’d treated her so delicately the first time around, he knew she was hurting. 

Before she could make known her enthusiasm, the door to her quarters ‘pinged’. 

They both froze. Sara more obviously annoyed, and Reyes in bemused curiosity. 

She went over the comm, “Yes?”

“Ryder, it’s Suvi,” came the soft, cheerful voice from the other side of the door, “I wondered if you might have time for a little group study Jaal, Lexi and I have put together. We spoke briefly about your beliefs- or lack thereof- and I thought you might enjoy a little stimulating conversation with the others.”

The only ‘stimulating’ thing Sara would enjoy at the moment was waiting between her legs. But Reyes had turned from ‘a little’ curious, to downright interested. He looked back down at her with a smirk, leaning in to kiss along her jaw until she was breathless, and ever so shallowly push inside her. 

Sara yelped, she couldn’t help it. And the yelp quickly dissolved into a watery moan. But he didn’t go further than that, simply perched there, testing her. Her breath came in pants, and she tried to wiggle closer to him, but he stayed resolutely where he was, even as his eyes were hooded and his lips parted to draw hot little breaths. 

“Aren’t you going to answer her, Sara?” 

“You sadistic bastard,” she groaned, “No- I’m not. She’ll go away eventually. You really want us to be found out so quickly? You’re not even going to give the crew a chance to get to know you as Reyes, before it’s ‘the Pathfinder’s squeeze’?”

“What if that’s  _ all _ I want to be?” 

His voice dipped down into a growl, and he thrust so suddenly, the bed shook. Sara jerked beneath him, and could do nothing but  _ hold  _ on as his hips rolled rhythmically against hers. Reyes Vidal was an  _ excellent _ lover, and he rendered her speechless with only the smallest of moves. This of course, was a much bigger move, and speechlessness had turned to nothing but wild gasping, and subsequently begging. It egged him on successfully though, he wasn’t unaffected by the puddle he turned her into. With each of her moans that echoed and bounced around the room, the furrow between his brows deepened further. His thrusts got harder, even though he tried to hold himself back for her weakened state. 

After some time, neither of them cared. 

His hands had her hips in a vice grip, and he was pounding into her with abandon- encouraged when the only words she could manage to keen out were, ‘harder- oh- Reyes-  _ harder _ !’ He just about lost it when she began to match his rhythm, lifting her hips up off the bed to pull him deeper with every stroke. 

With the new angle, he gritted his teeth with a hiss, and pulled her up suddenly into his lap. He was kneeling on the bed, and she was subject to his will, his arms wrapped around her hips, lifting her and pulling her back down hard onto him. Her hands scrambled for purchase on his shoulders, and her moans turned into something like sobs, calling his name louder, and louder with each thrust. 

The friction between them was unbearable. Sara felt like there was a supernova exploding on loop beneath her skin, and that every freckle had turned into a sunspot, a solar flare that reached out and wrapped him up tighter and tighter. If her amp had been enabled, she imagined it’d be flaring just about now. 

But all she could do was hold on, and let him take her. 

Suffice to say as soon as Sara hadn’t given Suvi a quick answer, SAM had informed her that the Pathfinder was indisposed. 

She finished, riding him like that. And he was soon to follow, his abdomen tensing and flexing as his thrusts stuttered into her  _ tight _ throbs. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder, begging for anything-  _ anything _ , muttering nonsense. He was buried deep inside her, pushing out the last of himself, gasping into her hair. 

His arms shook as he held her close, crushing her to his chest. She wrapped her legs around him properly, and he fell forward onto the bed, clutching her close with the strength of a man possessed. 

“Sara, Sara,” he kept whispering into her sweaty hair, moaning as he lingered inside her, and every twitch was divine torture. 

She was breathing heavily, a dull headache throbbing at the base of her skull. But she could care less. The pain was proof this was real. 

“Not-” she started, trying to catch her breath, “not the, religious type?”

“Oh, I have a religion,” he muttered breezily into her skin, “I worship even now. Can you not see my utter devotion to the chapel?”

_ Jesus _ .

The expletive seemed oddly inappropriate at the moment, but she rolled with it. No one had ever said something quite so...Well, she supposed the need for sweet talking wasn’t exactly there if he’d gotten her into bed already- but that wasn’t really the point of getting miles out of their relationship, was it? 

“So you’re an Atheist?” 

He sighed, “We’re really talking about this now?”

“We don’t  _ have _ to,” Sara said innocently, given away by the flush to her cheeks which crept past her neck, over her heaving chest and down her belly, “we could always get up and make the walk to the showers. I’m sure  _ no one _ will be there.”

“I’m not the one with the problem where the publicity of our relationship is concerned.”

“So we’re calling it that now? A ‘relationship’?”

He groaned, and dislodged his arms from around her, sitting up between her legs, as they spread easily around him. He looked down at her, gloriously dishevelled, covered in  _ his _ bruises. Reddened and enticing. The crux of their bodies, joined still, was a beautiful contrast of copper and milk. 

“You’re  _ really _ making an effort to kill the mood.”

“I thought the mood was done?” 

“You think I’ve only got two rounds in me?” He asked, laboriously sliding himself out of her. She winced, just slightly, and he smirked, “I think it’s the other way around,  _ Princesa _ .”

“Did you just call me a Princess in spanish? My translator gets weird when it’s more than one Earth language involved.”

“I do believe English is common between us,” he said wryly, wiping himself off with the sheet, “you’re welcome to turn the thing off. Mine’s set to rest when I speak with a human. I enjoy the accents, the languages.”

Sara pursed her lips, and turned her translator off before sitting up with a groan as her back, shoulders and neck protested adamantly. 

“Were you born on Earth, or something? The whole ‘cultural melting pot’ of humans seems to be more of a thing there than anywhere else.”

“No,” he said with a sigh, “How about that shower?”

“Oof,” her brows ticked up, “did I hit a nerve?”

“Shower,” he insisted, getting out of the bed. She was distracted for a moment by the  _ lovely _ light of the FTL trail on his bare ass, before he pulled his pants on. Even then, he looked over his shoulder at her with the ghost of a smile. “I promised I’d tell you everything...But let’s spread things out a bit, shall we?” 

Sara pursed her lips, curiosity piqued, but didn’t push further. She let him help her up from bed, and pulled on her sweats and hoodie. They approached the door, and she raised a brow at him,

“You sure you want this?”

“Are  _ you _ ?” He replied, with nothing but collected confidence on his features, “We aren’t exactly ringing any bells and trumpeting announcements over the comm. We’re just walking to the showers, from your quarters- which people might not even notice. Let it be what it is. No secrets, remember?” 

Sara buzzed her lips, and hit the controls on the door, “No secrets.”

 

As soon as they stepped out into the hallway, the door to the crew quarters whooshed open, and Suvi poked her head out, “Oh, Ryder! I’m glad I’ve caught you. The meeting’s only just started, we got distracted with dinner and-”

She then noticed the sex hair, the flushed cheeks, visible bruises on necks, and rumpled clothes. Reyes tossed the little researcher a dark grin, while Sara looked like someone had shot her in the gut. 

Suvi’s mouth dropped open. 

“Oh.  _ Oh _ . I...Well, perhaps later, then? Yes. Later.” 

Then she turned, and scuttled quickly back into the crew quarters, the doors shutting solidly behind her. 

“One down,” Reyes muttered in her ear, “Not too bad, right?”

Sara sounded pained, “Oh yeah, easy.”

He laughed, shaking his head, and kept his hands mercifully to himself as they made their way down the hallway, “So you’ve really  _ never _ been with someone before?”

“I think it was pretty clear I wasn’t  a virgin,” she grumbled, opening the bathroom door to peek in. Finding it empty, she shuffled him inside and then placed a lock on both doors that would take even  _ Jaal _ some time to decrypt. 

“That’s not what I meant,” he chided as he stepped into the cramped stall, moving to the head nearest the wall, and peeling out of his clothes. Sara took them and closed the door behind her as she stepped under the other head. Reyes began humming when the hot water hit his chest, but all Sara could let out was a sigh of relief when it spilled over her head, and down her aching body. 

She snuck a glance over at him while his head was under the water. His body was remarkably free of scars- unlike hers. He was tall and lean with the bulk of muscle without the gym definition. He was strong because he had to be, not because he wanted to look like it. 

She spent too much time watching the black locks of his hair break away from the strict order he kept them in, and he caught her looking. Water dripped from his chin as he gave her a cocky smile. 

So she looked away and tried to think of what she was saying before he’d gotten naked. Not an easy task. 

“I was always busy at dig sites back in the Milky Way, I didn’t have time, or the patience for that kind of thing,” She shrugged, smoothing her hair back, and away from her face. She missed the depth of his focus as his eyes traced her body. Every curve. Every scar. She was being mapped and she didn’t even know. But a part of her felt his scrutiny. A part of her loved it.

“Everyone who met me was scared shitless of  my father, anyway. The  _ disgraced _ N7? My brother and I were pariahs once he was discharged. And it only got worse after the Geth attacked the Citadel. Those last few years before the Initiative launched were the worst.” 

He nodded in understanding and looked away as she poured a dollop of hair wash into her hand. She remembered, back when she was young- her mother had an arsenal of hair care products. Sara personally couldn’t recall if there had ever been a time she’d ever used anything more than the blandly packaged ‘hair wash’, an all in one inclusive product. She wondered if that could change. If Andromeda could really be her fresh start. 

The man next to her certainly was. 

Once they were done, and had pulled on their civvies, he looked in the mirror at his hair. It was a mass of ringlets and curls so changed from his usual no-hair-out-of-place ‘look’, that Sara could only stare while he halfheartedly tried to tame it. After a moment, his attempts ended in a shrug, and he looked back at her with a lazy smile.

“When I signed up for the Initiative, I heard all about your father. Not so much about you, no matter what he did, and what everyone thought about it,” he reached over and took her hand, “I’m interested in knowing  _ you _ , Sara Ryder.” 

“The feeling’s mutual,” she replied weakly, looking up at him with her try at a smile. He smirked, and kissed her cheek.

“Good, because I’ve set my things up in your quarters.”

“What!?” 

He was already walking out of the room, and down the hallway, “The crew quarters were too cramped for me. And like I said,” he grinned over his shoulder at her, “I’m only interested in being ‘the Pathfinder’s squeeze,’ to everyone on this ship. Most of all to you. It’s why I’m here, Ryder. You play hero, I’ll be right next to you. But just remember  _ who _ I’m fighting for.”

She watched him go. She watched the doors to  _ her _ room open for him, without so much as a passcode uttered.  _ SAM _ . 

But through the fear and the anxiety and uncertainty that had flooded her chest at his proximity...She felt a flutter of happiness. 

Sara decided she’d cling to that flutter, for now. It was the safest bet. 

 

It was late into their FTL trip when she finally sat at her email terminal. Sara had reluctantly followed Reyes back to her-  _ their-  _ room. That was going to take some getting used to. But the man knew what he wanted, and he went after it with a single minded focus. First it’d been Kadara, now, Sara supposed somehow, it’d shifted to her. 

Part of her was chomping at the bit, ready to bolt. The other part wanted to know more about him. He’d promised answers, but thus far she’d only gotten more questions. He spoke Spanish. That was one thing. In fact, when he’d mentioned signing up for the Initiative, she realized that the Nexus likely still had records of everyone who’d gone into exile- most of the files were corrupted, but if SAM dug deep enough...

Oh- now that was a tempting thought. 

_ But _ it was also a gross invasion of his privacy. 

However, if she read it and didn’t tell him, there was the possibility that she could fact check the information he fed her, so he’d never have the  _ chance  _ to lie to her again-

Wow. Back up, Sara. 

She closed her eyes, blocking out the light of the screen and listening to the soft snores of her roommate behind her. After the showers he’d fallen into bed, nuzzled along her collarbone and made big talk about a round three- before promptly falling asleep. Sara, being the borderline insomniac that she was, had covered him up and ventured across the room. 

The first email was from Lexi.

It was titled, ‘Sharing Quarters…?’

She skipped that one. That was a problem for future Sara to deal with. And her heart did a flip flop in her chest when she realized that was  _ two _ people who knew, now. 

They were together, right? They were in the same room- he was with her on the Tempest, he said he was fighting for her, not for humanity, he’d  _ said _ it outright! But she knew he cared about peace as much as he did his cut of the credits. It’s why he’d  _ bothered  _ taking Kadara from Sloane. She hoped. She wanted to believe that he was telling her the truth, now. She really did. But trusting him was so hard. 

‘ _ Bang _ .’

The shadows parting, the glint of the sniper in the dark. Charlatan. 

Sara took a shuddering little breath as SAM quietly informed her that her heart rate had escalated. 

Directly under Lexi’s emails, were Scott’s.

She’d have to see him when they got back to the Nexus, there was no getting around that. So she might as well come armed. 

She started with the earliest one. 

It didn’t have a title, just a date. Scott was always cut and dry, after all. 

 

‘ _ Sis, _

_ You left? Harry says the Tempest shipped out to Eos this morning. Why didn’t you come say goodbye? _

_ -Scott’ _

 

Sara felt her teeth clenching, but she opened the next one anyway. It was longer.

 

‘ _ Sis, _

_ I get it. Dad’s dead. I look like him. But maybe remember that you’re the only thing I’ve got left, too. Harry doesn’t exactly make for the best company.  _

_ They gave me Dad’s old room. I guess it’s supposed to be yours, they tell me you’re hardly ever here. Always out on that ship. But I did some snooping in SAM node, and learned what I could about everything that’s been going on.  _

_ Two new races of aliens? And you’ve got one on your ship. Are you sure you can trust him? I did what research I could, but the Angaran Embassy on the Nexus isn’t forthcoming with information about their people beyond useless cultural nuances. Get back to me. _

_ I mean it. _

_ -Scott’ _

 

She could  _ feel _ his frustration seeping through that last email. It’d been dated a week after she left. That would have been around the time she was mowing down the rest of the kett left on Eos. It took her another read through before she could move on, though. It was just so  _ Scott _ . She could see him sifting through records, trying to hack into the Angaran Embassy, and acting like a perfect innocent when they came after him for it. He was such an ass, and it was appalling how few people knew that about him. 

The third email was marked...Ah, the first day back in Kadara port. Three weeks after she’d left. There was bound to be nothing good, there. 

 

‘ _ Sis, _

_ You’re doing that thing you do- where you run from your problems. I know you are.  _

_ Whatever. You’ll come back eventually.  _

_ Still, this screen feels like all I have to talk to, lately. Harry lets me go for short walks around the Ark, now. He’s always reminding me that months in a coma will take time to recover from, and he thinks I have Stasis sickness on top of it. I think you stole all my luck when you woke up. I want it back.  _

_ The Turian Pathfinder stopped by today. Rix. He’s trying to get in contact with you, too. Apparently the other Pathfinders are holding some kind of secret meeting, but it depends on you. Get your ass back here, Sara.  _

_ He stayed for a while to talk. I guess I roped him into it- I’m dying of boredom, and it must have showed. He agreed to a pity game of chess. Dad had an  _ actual _ ivory board stashed under his bed. I may have started rooting through his stuff. Someone has to. He has a bunch of Earth junk, and some encrypted audio logs. Paranoid old bastard. _

_ Seriously, get back to me. _

_ -Scott’ _

 

And then, to her surprise, her screen flashed, and another email from her brother popped up at the top of the que. 

Sara stared at it for a moment. Still no title- same old Scott. She could picture him sitting at Dad’s many monitored terminal, glaring at the screen. She checked what time in his sleep cycle it would be on Ark Hyperion, and found it was  _ late _ . 

She sighed, and opened it.

 

‘ _ Sis, _

_ Avitus says you’re coming back. He just got the confirmation. Pathfinders have been watching the Nexus docking records.  _

_ Come see me first thing. _

_ -Scott’ _

 

A brow ticked up. ‘Avitus’, now? 

Her lips twitched in a smile. No  _ way _ . So she put the thoughts out of her mind and sat back in her chair, holding her knees to her chest. She’d been avoiding a lot, lately. After the Archon, dying, Scott waking up, and Tann’s slap in the face refusal to go after Meridian, she’d felt like there was nowhere to go. Heleus was suddenly so, so small. 

And then  _ he’d _ happened. 

Sara glanced over her shoulder and saw a dark shape in her bed. Waiting for her. Sleeping soundly. She wondered if he’d gotten much sleep at all the past few days, when there had been nothing but silence and tension between them. By how deeply he was dreaming, she’d assume the answer was; not much. She seemed to have a bad habit of causing trouble for people. But he kind of fit the profile for the exact brand of ‘people’ she was  _ supposed _ to cause trouble for. 

And yet here he was. On her ship. In her bed. 

“Together,” she finally said, out loud. 

Then she got up from her chair, turning off the console, and wandered over to her bed. She crawled in, and curled up with her pillow. Her sky blue eyes glowed from the starlight outside as she watched him sleep. 

Eventually, the gentle rhythm of his breathing was enough to lull her into dreams, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey look, it's Scott! Next time: Enter the Nexus, Sara trying to be less of a wreck than she is! And failing miserably!  
> As always, thank you so much for reading/commenting/ leaving kudos! The comments have kept me going, honestly. My bursts of inspiration usually don't last this long, you guys are amazing!


	6. tell your brother

It was an hour before they’d dock at the Nexus.

Sara had woken up with a start just a little while  after she’d managed to drift off, because Reyes had gotten out of bed. She watched him subtly from the darkness as he’d stood there for a moment, and then proceeded to prowl about the room. 

Apparently, he shared her nighttime restlessness. He kept turning to look back at her, but she knew it was too dark for him to see her eyes cracked open like they were. She kept her breathing even, and watched him watch her. He held himself loose, relaxed with only the slightest tension in the angle of his shoulders. She wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing, but he stopped to investigate her shelves, the papers scattered over her table. 

Maybe it was simple acclimation, she couldn’t be sure. 

At some point, he left the room, and came back soon after to lay down once more. He settled on his side, watching her watching him- and she figured he knew she was awake by that point. But he didn’t say anything. He only reached out to let the tips of his fingers touch hers, and then closed his eyes. 

Eventually, Reyes fell back to sleep, but Sara was  _ wide  _ awake. 

She felt like the walls were closing in- all at once her room was entirely too messy, and yet suspiciously clean. Did it look like a person lived here? Did he approve of the literature she’d lifted from her father’s quarters? Had he even  _ read  _ a paper book? She wanted to ask him all these questions to the point that she was buzzing with it, but she also wanted to let him sleep. He needed it, she could tell.

So she laid there watching him, and fretting, until SAM gave her the hour warning. 

 

Sara wandered out to the kitchen first while Reyes took a ridiculous amount of time to gel and slick his hair. She had decided to leave him to it after running a brush through hers. It’d felt strange, standing side by side in the mirror while he plucked little oddities out of his footlocker. 

Before she left, he’d caught her around the waist and pressed a kiss to her temple. It was wordless, and had her cheeks lit up as she stumbled out of the room. She could hear him laughing behind her before the doors closed. 

But, she really just wanted some food. So she shuffled to the kitchen, hoping no one was-

The door to the kitchen opened, and she found Cora and Lexi with their morning caff. And if this wasn’t a premeditated ambush, Sara had never seen one. 

“Good morning, Ryder,” Lexi said with an unreadable smile, “Caff’s on. Won’t you have some?”

Cora didn’t say anything at all. 

Feeling rather like a sheep slipping into a den of two particularly keen wolves, Sara made the choice of food over comfort, and stepped inside. The doors shut behind her, and sealing her doom, she accepted the cup of caff from Lexi when it was handed to her. 

“Did you get my email?” The Asari doctor got straight to the point. 

“Email?” Sticking with ignorance was always her go-to plan. 

“Why is Reyes Vidal shacking up in-” Cora cut herself off, then started again, trying to stay calm, “I’m not your mother, Sara, but we know he’s a smuggler. SAM hasn’t been forthcoming with information, but Jaal has. ‘Shena’ feeds the Resistance more than information. And he was based on Kadara. He might be good for the crew,” she frowned, “but for you? Don’t you think things are moving a little quickly?”

Sara set the cup of caff down, “You’d be right, there, Cora,” her expression was a cold one as she grabbed a few ration backs out of the cabinet, “you’re  _ not _ my mother.”

“Nice,” she heard Lexi mutter behind her, as she swept out of the kitchen. “I told you not to come out guns blazing.”

The doors shut before she could hear Cora’s response. 

* * *

  
  


The dock was entirely too crowded. It was always too crowded. Ships coming and going, a constant influx of stasis pods from the Turian Ark, and crowds of  _ people _ who seemed to congregate around Hydroponics and the Cultural center at all hours of the day. The masses of people swarmed up to meet them when the doors from the Tempest’s terminal slid open. 

Reyes seemed as open and curious as any visiting tourist, but the tension under his skin marked him as someone so much more. 

“Well, it certainly has been some time since-”

“No gawking,” Sara grunted, brushing past him and setting off at a walk that was so close to a jog, even Reyes’ long legs struggled to keep up.

He hurried behind her, duffle over his shoulder as she’d informed him they’d be staying on Ark Hyperion for a few days. There had been an awkward- on her end- exchange about the necessity of him accompanying her, or staying in the same room she planned to. But Reyes had let her stumble through it before assuring her he was planning on staying by her side, if she wanted him there. 

Sara supposed she did, though she felt like admitting it too easily would be  _ wrong _ somehow. She wanted to ask him if that was strange- couples asked each other things like that, didn’t they? She couldn’t be sure, and not wanting to look like even more of an idiot, she kept her mouth shut. 

“Is there a particular reason we’re sprinting through the docking bay?” He asked with a huff as Sara ducked her head away from a nearby crowd of Salarians. 

“Just want to get away from the crowds,” she muttered in response. Her heart was skipping like a rabbit. The feeling from her sleepless night, the walls closing in, had only seemed to get worse when they  _ opened _ up into this place. She felt like she was struggling, choking, gasping for air- her lungs began to constrict, and her breaths came in smaller, tighter bursts as she tried to push her way through the crowds. 

“Sara- Sara?” At her lack of a response, she found that even off Kadara, Reyes was not a man who enjoyed a powerless role. He grabbed her hand, and all but yanked her to a stop when she was still intent on ploughing forward. In the back of her mind, she considered slipping out of his grasp and sprinting off. He’d stopped her almost exactly in the middle of the docking bay. 

“Calm down,” he said lowly, pulling her close. He looked down at her, those honey gold eyes locking her in his grasp more effectively than his hand could. She felt her knees wobble dangerously. SAM reminded her that her heart rate was escalating. It had a habit of doing that around him. 

“It’s just the Nexus. If anything  _ I _ should be the one close to panic.” Reyes wove his fingers through hers, his other hand flexing on his duffel. He was in soft civvies, no one would recognize him, and all the people he’d known before were probably exiles, too. They didn’t know he wasn’t an Initiative citizen. They didn’t know he was a smuggler. They didn’t know he was the Charlatan. Secrets. Damn it.

She took a deep breath in through her nose, and let it out between her teeth. And he smiled. That smile damn near broke her heart. Her pupils dilated, and she popped up on her tiptoes before she knew what she was doing. 

To kiss his cheek. 

“Thank you,” she said against his skin, before she rocked back down onto her heels. The widening of his eyes was satisfying. The ferocity of his affection that roared up a moment later, butterfly inspiring. 

“You’re welcome,” his lip curled, “be careful about that ‘showing affection’ thing, Sara. I might start to think you  _ like  _ me.”

“Bastard,” she reminded him, “stop reusing your lines. If I wake up to find you sitting across from me all, ‘you look like you’re waiting for someone’, I’ll smack you.”

“I have a deep, passionate love for cliches, Sara,” he pouted, stepping closer to her. Reyes filled up the entirety of her world. The Nexus was tuned out around her. The crowd flowed past them like a river, and the soft light from the sunlamps above set to ‘morning’ made everything surreal and perfect. 

She found herself smiling, laughing. Completely disarmed in a few sentences, a few seconds. How did he do that? How  _ did _ he do that?

“Cliches?” she asked quietly. “I think you like hearing yourself talk. And making other people think you’re clever.”

“I  _ am  _ clever,” he insisted, the corners of his eyes crinkling, “I wouldn’t have lasted this long if I wasn’t. And I certainly wouldn’t be able to handle you. You’re like a jigsaw puzzle. One I’d happily spend hours and hours-”

“Ohmygod the metaphor,” she groaned, and turned away from him, keeping a hold of his hand. Damn if people knew- they’d been standing close enough already, and his hand was like an anchor. She couldn't hear Cora or Liam or Lexi or anyone in her head when he was grounding her like that. Because in the end it was just the two of them, and what did that really matter? 

A criminal record and a cluster to save said it mattered, but she was going to ignore that and focus on the flesh and blood behind her.

They got to the tram station unscathed. Remarkable. 

“Excuse me,” she said under her breath as they filed into the crowded car. A Salarian standing by the nav press craned his neck to see the newcomers, 

“Where to?”

“Oh, thank you,” Sara said, blinking, realizing. He didn’t know who she was. “Uh, Ark Hyperion- habitation deck. Please.” 

“Sure thing,” he tapped the button with an elegant, coral colored finger. Then the tram was moving. There were little snippets of mumbled conversation drifting from others pressed close. And soon, the little car darkened as it moved through the network of rails. It was quiet and small and Sara felt Reyes pressed right up behind her. Her heart was still warm and heavy from his words and his eyes and his hands- she reached back and took one now, bringing it over her stomach and holding it there. 

She was surprised when she felt his nose brushing her shoulder, and his forehead settling in its place. 

Quiet. Quiet.

They stood there like that for nearly ten minutes while there were other stops made. His one hand reached up to hold onto the rail, his other woven with hers, settled over her stomach still, and his head pressed into her shoulder. For all the world, a pair of colonists trying to make it in their new home. Or that’s what the Salarian thought, anyway.

“You two fresh out of stasis?”

Sara glanced up at him, and he was smiling at her. Sympathy was there, too. 

“Yes,” she lied, and she felt Reyes go still behind her, listening. “We woke up yesterday. We’re security for the Ark. Headed to our assigned housing.” 

The Salarian nodded sagely, “I just woke up a month ago, myself. You know, the human Pathfinder- Ryder, I think- she saved my entire Ark! We were hooked up to a kett ship. Oh, have you heard about the kett? I guess it might be kind of shocking if you haven’t…”

He started to babble, as Salarians so often did, and Sara leaned into Reyes just a bit more. The Salarian told them all about the Nexus, where to go for drinks and food, about the new innovations from Andromeda, the outposts- “If you two are thinking of starting a family, I’d head to Eos, it’s the safest, most viable outpost. They’re already calling it ‘New Earth’. Prodromos is a great place to settle down, I hear.”

They got off the tram having exchanged emails, and promises to come out for a drink with the Salarian- Gormesh- and a few of his friends from the tech labs. 

“We’re all strangers here,” he’d said with that cheery smile, “gotta stick together!”

Then the door had shut, and Sara and Reyes stood quietly together in the empty transit hall of the Hyperion’s habitation deck. 

It was a moment before either of them said anything. They were still holding hands. 

“If more people had been like him, in the beginning,” Reyes said softly, his eyes on the ground, a furrow in his brows, “I don’t think the mutiny would have happened.” 

Sara didn’t have anything to say to that. She was full up, saddled with her thoughts, and in a strangely contemplative frame of mind. 

“Why did you lie?” he asked, after a time.

“You came to Andromeda to be someone,” she said quietly, “I am someone. It’s not what it’s cracked up to be.”

He watched her for a moment, then, tugged gently on her hand, tipping his head toward the doors, “Where to, Sara?”

She sighed, “We’ll put our things down- then, you get to meet my brother.”

“Should I bring my gun?”

“Probably.”

 

SAM informed her that Harry Carlyle had  _ not _ given Scott clearance to pick up his training routine. 

And yet, the Hyperion’s gymnasium was where they found him. It was a big place, with all sorts of top of the line workout equipment- there was even an olympic sized pool, though they didn’t have the resources to fill it, just yet. 

Because the Hyperion was linked up to the Nexus as much as the Leusinia and Paarchero, it had become less of a human niche, and more of an arm in which the rest of the Nexus could spread. It was still  _ mainly _ humans, of course, but as Sara and Reyes had shuffled down the hall to Sara’s apartment, they’d seen a few other races meandering through the hallway. Sara had stared so long at a Salarian with a soft, pink human baby cuddled in his arms, that Reyes had to snap her out of it. 

So the gym was mostly humans, but Scott happened to be punching  a bag held by a turian. And upon closer inspection, not just any turian. It was Avitus Rix- which from Scott’s emails, Sara didn’t think she should be  _ too _ surprised. But Rix had seemed moody- and grieving- the last time they’d spoken. Wait. That meant he’d get along perfectly with Scott, who had the emotional range of; sullen, to downright grumpy. 

Sara and Reyes lingered in the doorway, and he glanced down at her with a raised brow,

“Which one is your brother?”

“You can’t tell?”

“Well,” he glanced back up, “considering his medical status, I’m hoping it isn’t the one destroying that punching bag. But, from what I know about  _ you _ , I’d bet that it is.”

She frowned up at him and he shrugged helplessly. So she sighed, and started across the room, “It’s a good thing you’re a betting man.”

Reyes trailed behind her. The domestic experience of setting down their bags in the little apartment had wound them both up tight enough that they’d had a hard time  _ leaving _ the little place- but this did a great job of killing the mood. Even injured; Scott Ryder hit  _ hard _ .

“Scott,” the turian Pathfinder muttered as he glanced up, and noticed Sara coming towards them. The human met his eyes, then paused, and stood up straight, looking over his shoulder where the turian had nodded. 

“Well, looks like you finally decided to crawl out of whatever hole you buried yourself in for a  _ month _ .”

His voice was flat and cold despite the harsh breaths he took in, and the sweat bleeding through the grey of his tank. The man turned around, and Reyes, not someone who was easily intimidated- was just a little intimidated. Mainly, because Scott Ryder was a dead on, near clone copy of a younger Alec Ryder. His hair was jet black like his sister’s, and his skin freckled and pale- but the eyes were where the Ryders lived. His were different than his sister’s. Sara had wide, glacial blue eyes that turned silver white in the sun. Scott had deep ocean eyes, that turned black in the shadows. Danger was in this man, and Reyes knew it. 

Sara was bristling, though, “The hole that’s my  _ job _ ? Making a home for the Milky Way in Andromeda? No big deal.”

Scott scoffed, and put a bandaged hand on his hip, “Sara, I know you. You freaked out that I’d woken up, and you tend to cut ties when things get too intense. I never thought you’d try to cut ours, though. It’s a little on the umbilical side.”

“I wouldn’t-” she started with an indignant gasp, “I just needed some  _ time, _ you ass!”

“Without consideration for anyone other than yourself, yeah, sounds like you.”

“Maybe we should,” Rix started.

“Sara, you need to,” Reyes began.

“Not now!” The twins snapped at once, shutting up their companions more from the shock of how  _ similar _ they’d sounded in that moment. 

“I  _ died _ !” Sara snarled, getting up in her brother’s face, even though he was half a foot taller than she, “SAM stopped my fucking heart in the belly of a hostile alien flag-ship! Dad is  _ gone _ !”

“And you think I’m  _ less _ affected by all of that? Here’s the difference; you got a ship and a gun and something to do with people I’m assuming you trust. I’ve had to  _ sit here _ with the ghost of dad and all his stuff, without even being able to walk properly. And to top it all off, the one person I have left abandons me. You could die out there Sara- Hell- you  _ have _ . Do you ever, ever stop to think of  _ anyone _ other than yourself?”

“I think of the entire human race,” She threw her hands up in the air, “The turian, asari, salarian, krogan, and now even the fucking angara! The other arks were fucked and the other pathfinders are new blooded and overloaded- what the hell makes you think I have the fucking brain capacity to think of myself outside all that? That’s why I run from it, Scott! Because I  _ can’t _ !”

“Oh, woe is me,” he sneered, “the Pathfinder that gets the glory of all four combined. Finding new planets and running and gunning through space to save  _ everyone _ . You must just  _ hate _ all that attention.”

“ _ Yes _ !” she yelled, “I  _ do! _ You want Dad’s fucking title? Is that what you want, Scott? Do you want me to fucking-”

“ _ Alright _ !” 

The twins whipped around, and found that Turian vocal ranges could get a lot more volume behind them than human ones. Reyes had fallen silent, and watched the entire exchange with the expression of a man soaking up every little detail- mainly because the woman he was enamored with was frighteningly tight lipped when it came to her feelings and this was a gold mine. But Rix had other opinions. 

“We are leaving,” the turian stonily informed Scott, “you are going to shower, and get some salty human food for your electrolyte count. Then, you’re going to meet your sister for dinner and talk about your feelings like adults.”

“I will not-”

“You will,” Rix growled, and it was a turian growl, too. All teeth. Scott actually paused. And considering he was as bull headed as his sister, that was a feat. “Now. Go.”

Scott didn’t look at Sara as he brushed past her. Sara was  _ fuming _ , and wanted to say something. But as Rix passed by, he put a clawed hand on her shoulder, “Ryder, you were there when I hit my low.” His voice was quiet and more flange than vocals, it rumbled through her chest where his hand perched, like an electric current. “Scott hit his a few weeks back, and I happened to be there. I can help, now.”

The fight went out of Sara like someone had punched her in the gut, and she hung her head. 

“Yeah, Avitus,” she mumbled into her chest, “Thanks.”

He patted her shoulder, then, hurried after her retreating brother. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a happy family reunion. I too yell at estranged siblings in public places.


	7. full time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A chapter from Reyes POV- so no one should be surprised that there will be adult situations sprinkled through.   
> Just a note- all the information I have about Reyes' past was taken from his dialogue and his name, and I'm just running with it. Basically, it's all my headcanon and I don't claim any of it as right or true. Just what I thought would be neat. Though his codex entry was largely unhelpful, the only bit of information it hands out was that his role on the Nexus was a shuttle pilot. So I'm going from there.  
> Thank you again for reading!

* * *

 

Reyes was smart enough not to say anything until they got some distance between themselves and the gym. 

He didn’t try to touch her, or hold her hand, or even get her attention. He was good at keeping in the background. It was how he survived the mutiny when so many bullets were flying and there weren’t colors to separate the sides. It was how he’d stumbled onto Kadara, and fought with Sloane to liberate it from the kett. And when Sloane became bloated with power, his silence was what gave rise to the Collective. He built it from nothing but a group of like minded people who were fed up with Kelly’s vice grip on Kadara- and then, he’d distributed his power in order to consolidate it. He spread himself thin, and then let his influence sink down into the bedrock. People asked who the Charlatan was, and the answer was always different, and the same. He wasn’t the leader of the Collective; he  _ was _ the Collective. And he was Shena. And he was Reyes. And now…

Now he was looking at the back of Sara Ryder’s head as she stormed down the Hyperion’s habitation deck. 

It was strange to be here. He’d never seen the inside of the human ark. When Reyes had signed onto the Initiative, he’d been given the job of shuttle transit pilot. Everyone had to work, in Andromeda. That was fine. Back then he’d shuffled through life, keeping his head down and making sure there weren’t any ripples that could come back and hurt him. He’d been alone and he’d been quiet, and there had been no one to say goodbye to when he laid down in stasis. Six hundred years later, it wasn’t much different. 

The first few months on the Nexus had been as expected- mostly working construction sites along the arms, sometimes getting to putter over to an asteroid field to help with a mining op. The new galaxy was just as dull as the old one. But Reyes realized that it wasn’t the  _ world _ that lacked excitement. 

After the mutiny, things changed. 

After Kadara, things were changing. 

He’d lived for himself because he’d had no one else to try for. But now, his hand reached out, and he realized he could touch her. Sara was real. 

She was as real as the day he’d stepped up to her at the bar, and taken in her beauty almost like a physical blow. As the day that she’d stood up to Zia, and claimed he was a better man. He almost felt like it was true. 

He could be, for her. 

“Hey,” he heard himself say, his words shattering the silence. She flinched like he’d struck her, instead of touching her arm. He continued on anyway, he’d learned by now that Sara wasn’t an easy one to wrangle in. But if he’d been looking for easy, he would have given up on her a long while ago. “Come here.”

When she turned around, he really didn’t expect the tears. 

Or the vulnerability. 

Scott had cracked her open like an egg, and she was spilling out everywhere. She let herself be pulled into his arms without struggle. She sagged against him, and he felt something white hot burn through his chest. It was the same feeling he got when they’d kissed for the first time. As when they’d slow danced, and he’d promised her all of himself. When he’d taken her to bed in the Tempest suite. 

The fiery feeling bubbled up in his throat, and he clutched her close as she cried against his chest. 

“My brother’s name was Aurelio,” he found himself saying. A name that’d been lost to time for centuries. That was tucked into the back of his mind, nice and tidy- he’d never planned to say it again. And yet here he was. “He wasn’t my twin, but he was only a little younger than me.”

“Y-You had a brother?” 

She was sobbing so he’d give her the the pointless question. He couldn’t help his smile at the little sniffles that accompanied it. Sara Ryder had no idea how precious she was. 

“I did, back in the Milky Way,” he let one hand trail through her dark hair, the other rub little circles on her back. “He was a sweet boy- not nearly so feisty as your Scott.”

“That’s one word for him.”

“I imagine you have many more creative ones,” Reyes shook his head, slowly swaying back and forth with her. “But yes, Aurelio and I did not fight often, but when we did, our parents would have to pull us apart before we killed each other. We always fought about pointless things, too. Never the important stuff.”

“Yeah,” she muttered into his chest, and he felt his shirt begin to soak through with the tears. Normally, Reyes was a bit of a perfectionist, and something like that would bother him until he could get home to change. But at this moment, he’d let her cry buckets all over him if only to see her smile again. 

“I remember, one day,” he said, his eyes flicking over to the window, to the Hyperion’s greenhouse labs. Rows and rows and rows of green under water misters, scientists ghosting through the fog like specters of a galaxy past. “He came running in from playing with his friends. One of them had knocked his front tooth out.” He smiled fondly at the memory. Little Aurelio had only been six. A mop of unruly black hair atop his head, and wide green eyes that reflected the world around him like mirrors. He’d been sobbing, blood on his lips, holding up the tooth like evidence from a crime scene. Their little house was nothing but poly-plaster and cheap plastic furniture, but their mother still managed to make it feel like home. She still managed to sit Aurelio down at the table and clean him up, and give him a bowl of freshly made cocido montanes. Reyes had never met anyone who made it special like their mother. 

“He wanted me to hit the boy that did it,” Reyes said with a sigh, “even though it was an accident. Aurelio was normally so mild mannered- but if he was in pain, he struck out at anything nearby, like a snake. When I told him I wouldn’t do it, that the boy didn’t deserve it, he turned his anger to me.” He glanced down at her, and found one watery blue eye peeking up at him from the mess of inky black over her face. 

“We fought for days- and I think we’d forgotten why after the first hour. He tried to make my life as difficult as he could; I found my toothbrush in the toilet, even. But, in the end,” Reyes reached down to tilt her chin up, “I forgave him. Because he was my brother and he was hurting.”

“Oh you bastard,” she muttered thickly, wiping at her eyes and face, “you’re trying to teach me something. Damn it.”

He couldn’t help the smile, then. 

“Is that why you keep your toothbrush in a case? You think someone’s going to drop it in the toilet?”

The smile bloomed into a laugh, and the white hot feeling was back. He let it burn, it felt divine. The burn spread through his limbs to the tips of his fingers as he took her face in his hands, and leaned in to kiss her.

She met him all too willingly, and he relished the little whimper behind her lips as he pressed his against them. Sara was pliant and willing in his arms, pressing close. The way her soft little body met his was perfect- it’d been perfect from day one. His arms wrapped around her and tugged her tight. His hands wandered over her back, up into her hair, around her hips, and soon she was up against the wall. 

Things tended to fade into a haze, where she was involved. He lost the perfect control he liked to have over himself in these kinds of situations. Sara Ryder burned too brightly, and Reyes was so caught up in her heat that he barely noticed his tongue pressing past the barrier of her lips, his teeth knocking against hers in their enthusiasm. She was writhing and he was half hard already with the way her hips kept rocking against his. 

They were in a hallway and he didn’t care. He’d just told her about Aurelio. He hadn’t spoken about that boy in twenty years.  _ Twenty years _ \- any of his family. Since they’d been taken, he had pretended like they didn’t exist. It hurt less, that way. 

But Sara ripped past his defenses, and he promised to tell her everything- back on the Tempest when she’d asked just a few questions, he realized how hard that was going to be. He’d clammed up, but now? Telling her about Aurelio first had been so easy. He’d just  _ said  _ it, and look how happy he’d made her. 

Well. Among other things. 

Her legs were wrapped around his hips and she was still rolling and grinding against him and he was just about to lose his mind and take her in the nearest supply closet. But one of them had to be the responsible one. Reyes hadn’t thought it’d be him, if he ever managed to pin down a steady relationship, but his life in Andromeda was full of firsts.

“Why don’t we head back to the apartment?” he whispered hotly against her ear, breaking away from her lips had been painful, but he  _ did _ get to admire his handiwork along her neck at this angle. 

“Yes,” she breathed in a way that made him shiver, and strain harder against the tight material of his pants, “God- please. Hurry.”

And who was he to refuse a lady’s request?

 

Later, once the little couch in her apartment had been put through its paces, Reyes found himself laying back on it, staring at the ceiling. 

“How’s it going over there, round one?”

He snorted, too tired to keep it in, and ran a hand through his hair- it was a hopeless mess at this point and he wasn’t going to try to fight with it until she vacated the bathroom. 

“It would be going better if I’d gotten more sleep last night,” he said honestly, “I’m used to running on less; but no sleep and a woman who jumps me at every turn...what can you expect?’

She threw a towel at him through the open door, and he swatted it away with a chuckle. She grumbled something that sounded like, ‘old man’, and he raised a brow. Pursing his lips, Reyes tied and re-tied his sweat pants, 

“Age isn’t something we’ve really discussed.”

“Do we need to?”

Her voice sounded curious- to match how defensive he was becoming. He wasn’t entirely sure how old she was, but it had to be younger than him. She was still fresh faced and emotional and all the things he couldn’t remember being when he was younger. 

“I’m thirty-two,” he offered, tilting his head back up to look at the metal ceiling again. He traced the lines sweeping through again and again. 

“Wow- you  _ are _ an old man.”

He kept his wince inside his head. That bad, huh? “How’s it feel to be sleeping with someone so much more experienced- and wiser to boot?” He asked instead. It was easier than outing his insecurities. 

“Bah. What’s a decade when we’re both six centuries past our expiration dates, anyway?”

Twenty-two? Well, she  _ was  _ a ripe little thing. He tried to steer his thoughts in a different direction. It wasn’t that bad, actually. She had more responsibility than any twenty-two year old he’d ever heard of. Honestly, she made  _ his _ twenty two year old self look like a useless lump. What had he even been doing ten years ago? He tried to think, and realized that he’d been mostly hunched over textbooks in his cheap apartment that he’d shared with four other boys his age. Studying to get into flight school. Thankfully, his ‘tool lit up before he could get any further down that dark road of memories.

It with an incoming message over the open comm channels that one of his more intelligent lieutenants had strung through a series of satellites like talking through tin cans connected by string. He opened the comm, and gave it a minute to connect.

“Boss,” a voice, deepened and skewed though a modulator bloomed in his ear, “I’ve got eyes on Sloane’s 3rd. Morty Salrick. You want him dead or alive?”

How had Reyes forgotten about Kadara?

It’d been something like twenty-four hours since he left, and he’d been so wrapped up in Sara that he hadn’t-

“Take him out,” he muttered to the open air, knowing his voice would be just as changed on the other end of the line, “loose ends are something I don’t have time for. Work your way down the chain of command as far as you have to until nothing but the peons are left. Those we can use. Everything else is dead weight.” 

“Yes, Sir.”

The line cut, and he imagined he could  _ hear _ the cough of a silenced rifle in the dark. Another of Sloane’s figure heads dropping into the dust. 

And it felt  _ good _ .

He got up from the couch, rolling his shoulders as he stepped into the bathroom. Sara turned to look over her shoulder at him. In nothing but black panties and a dark binder bra. They were Initiative standard, and she  _ still _ made them look sexy. He knew it was more than her that had gotten his blood pumping, but his hands wrapped around her hips anyway. 

Reyes stood behind her, and looked over her shoulder in the mirror. She had a little tube of black clutched in her hand, and one set of lashes looked darker than the other. Her lips weren’t quite the shade of plum they usually were, and that little bottle of gloss sat untouched on the counter. This peering into her intimate moments shuddered through him as much as dropping his enemies without lifting a finger. 

She made Heleus bloom. He wanted to pick those flowers, tie them up in a bushel and hand them back to her. The possibilities she presented were endless. It all felt endless, and that’s why he loved it so much. She was like an adrenaline rush that wouldn’t end.

“Can I help you?” She asked with a raised brow. 

“Trust me,” he growled, leaning down to brush kisses over her shoulder, “you are. Don’t let me interrupt.”

She hesitated after an initial shiver, then, to her credit she did try. He let her get a few swipes of the little brush in, darkening the other lashes. But her eyes kept flicking to his in the mirror, watching his mouth as it plucked at her skin. He gave her a show, breathing out hot air against the line of freckles he followed, shuttering long lashes- moving to her neck. Her eyes were starting to droop, and when his lips found her pulse point, he could feel it pick up. 

Reyes met her eyes in the mirror as he opened his mouth, and let the flat of his tongue drag achingly slow up the pale column of her neck. 

Her mouth dropped open, and he watched the color rush into her cheeks. 

Perfect.

Then, he pulled her hips in tight, and rolled himself against her. He was hard, and she yelped in surprise before biting her lip to hold back a moan that he could feel bubbling in her chest. Catching her off guard was glorious, and the satisfaction only made his blood burn hotter. He ground his hips against her ass, and she dropped the tube of mascara on the counter. Her hands swept out so she didn’t smack her head against the counter, but he took that opportunity to bend her over, one hand gripping her hip, the other pushing on the small of her back. 

“ _ Reyes _ -” strangled pleading. It was like a drug.

Who needed Oblivion when he had something like this? He felt dark, strong, in control- this was what he wanted. He could be her sweet heart- he wanted to be- but she would never forget that he was  _ this _ too. 

He pulled down her panties with one hand, and freed himself with the other, pressing himself against the supple skin between her legs until her moans got louder. Then, he leaned in to whisper against the curve of her back,

“What was that about ‘old man’?”

Her response was smothered in her elbow, but he wasn’t having that. His free hand released her hips and came up to gently cup her jaw- firm enough that she was forced to look up at him in the mirror. To see him looming over her, perched and ready with the hard line of him rocking between her legs, begging for entrance. 

“Look at me, Sara,” he snarled softly, letting his lips curl. Showing his teeth. Her eyes were hooded and she almost looked like she was in pain- were she not pressing back against him so eagerly. 

“Reyes, please,” she begged incoherently as he lightly thrusted between her thighs again, “ _ Please _ .”

“Please  _ what _ ?” He gripped her jaw just a little tighter. 

“I need you…” she whimpered, and he restrained the vicious smirk that threatened to take over his features.

“Need me where, Sara?”

“ _ Bastard _ ,” she panted, trying to hang her head again, but his fingers forced her to look at him in the mirror, to look at herself, bent underneath him, the picture of submission. His eyes were wide in the bright light of the bathroom, cat-like, predatory. She met them, finally, and gasped, “Just  _ fuck _ me,  _ please _ .”

“See, you’re getting better at listening, I knew you would,” he said with deceptive gentility. For a moment, she looked like she might have a retort. But he wasn’t having that. He guided himself to her entrance, and buried to the hilt in one swift thrust. 

She bounced against the counter, and  _ gasped _ . It shut her up effectively, and he lingered there for a moment to get his bearings. 

“What was that?” he asked through his teeth, “It sounded like you were going to say something.” She was so incredibly tight around him, and her panting and whining wasn’t making his restraint any easier to grapple with. 

But she was beyond words, now. 

And that was fair enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woof. He might have forgotten he was a crime lord there for a minute.  
> Then he remembered. 
> 
> (Also! I'm working a lot this weekend and I don't have time to write two chapters a day like I have been. Thus today and tomorrow you'll be getting single chapter updates instead of double. Sorry! But my managers don't like me to have any kind of break from university during the week...they're nice like that...)


	8. tired blue boy, sad red girl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo I wasn't gonna post this until tomorrow but work drained the life out of me. I've hit a little bit of a block, and I'm not super sure where to go from here. I have an endpoint in sight, but I'm not entirely sure how to get there. So it might be a little while until chapter nine gets written, it might not. I really don't know- my inspiration is a finicky bitch. But, just in case it takes longer, I figured I'd put up chapter 8.  
> Thank you as always for reading and commenting- ya'll have been so sweet and your comments honestly give me life. Thank you so much. 
> 
> ALSO: I have a tumblr under the same name as I use here, and I draw stuff. Sometimes. I drew the Ryder twins so you guys could see what I see when I write them!

 

 

* * *

 

Sara wasn’t going to dignify him with a limp. 

But it turned out that someone trying not to limp was a little more obvious than someone with a limp would be in the first place. Reyes had settled back on the couch after his sudden intrusion in the bathroom, and Sara had taken  _ another _ shower. The whole time she’d been looking over her shoulder, unsure of whether she wanted to call him in or not. The part of her that had lost her shit when he held her down against the counter and fucked her senseless, wanted desperately for him to join her under the hot water. And then in the bed, and maybe on the couch again just because. But, that part of her would also use him as an excuse to skip out on dinner with her brother, assuming Rix could make the stubborn ass actually show up. 

So she sighed, and pulled on the black dress she’d been planning to wear before Reyes ambushed her, and slipped into her heels. 

When she walked out into the living room, his eyes were on her in an instant, and the screen he’d had floating above his wrist vanished.

“What was that?” She asked, tilting her head to the side as she put in her earrings- little diamond studs her father had gotten for her the year before they left for Andromeda. It was always diamonds with him, while Scott usually went the pearl route. Both were predictable, and entirely too similar. She didn’t know how her mother had dealt with it for so many years. 

“Oh, nothing for you to worry about,  _ Princesa _ ,” he said with a sly little smile. 

“Kadara stuff?”

“Voeld stuff, actually,” he said with a shrug, “The Collective is becoming more...vocal, about their support for the Resistance, which in turn, is support for you. I’ve given a few cells orders to begin expansion to places where the Angara could use it most.”

She stared at him. 

He raised a brow. 

“You’re lucky I have somewhere to be.”

“Why’s that?” He actually didn’t have a clue what she meant, and he looked a tad bit guarded. Oh, it was such a perfect opportunity, so that even though she didn't’ really have a clue as to what she was doing, she  _ had _ to try.

“Because,” she said lowly, stalking over to him. His eyebrows rose higher. Sara leaned over him, one hand braced on the arm of the couch, the other on the back behind him, “if I didn’t have to go meet my pig headed brother, I’d be sure to let you know just how  _ deeply _ I appreciate the men you’ve sent to bolster the Angaran cause.” 

His mouth dropped open when she took a long, slow moment to lick her lips, and let her meaning sink in. She was right. He  _ really _ hadn’t been expecting that. 

But she leaned away before he could react, or one-up her. She wanted this victory, and scuttled quickly to the door to keep it tucked securely under her belt.

“Don't wait up, Babe,” she said from the doorway, tossing a wink back to him. She shut the door before he could say anything else. 

 

“Don’t wait up, ‘babe’? Ohmygod,” Sara smacked her forehead over and over as she walked down the hallway from the transit station. She’d been going over those last few lines in her head for the entire ride and she felt like a proper  _ idiot _ . 

She didn’t say things like that! No one said things like that- unless they were in some old vid. ‘Babe’- where did that even come from? Oh she was going to regret that one. She knew she was. It was going to come back and solidly bite her in the ass. And Sara had no small ego; the blow to her pride it would be if he  _ laughed _ at her…

But, she didn’t get too much longer to think about it, as the Hyperion’s cafe came into view. It was one of several little places to eat outside the larger mess hall down on the operations deck. The smaller location and the brightly lit space gave people a chance for privacy, and the opportunity to forget for a moment that they were living on a cramped ship with too many people still in stasis in a galaxy 634 years ahead of everyone they’d left behind. It wasn’t like there was a return trip involved. And even if there  _ somehow _ could be, it would still be a  _ thousand _ plus years in the future. 

Who knew what they would come into contact with? Sara, personally, was willing to take her chances with the kett. She was one of the people who believed what Commander Shepard had tried to tell everyone before her ship was destroyed; the Reapers were real, and they were coming. Sara had been on the Citadel when Sovereign attacked. And she didn’t believe for a hot second that was any kind of ‘Geth’ technology. 

The kett were tame, in comparison. At least this enemy had a face, and wasn’t just a looming...monster. 

Speaking of monsters.

She sat down at the table across from her brother. 

Alec and Ellen Ryder had instilled in their children the value of making a good impression. Sara had thrown that out the window with her new wardrobe consisting of exclusively tracksuits, sweat pants and hoodies- but something about her brother being awake had made her call the clothes she’d brought with her from the Milky Way up out of storage. Eos and Kadara were wild worlds where it was armor, or something she was fine with getting dirty. But Scott was different.

He sat across from her in a black button up and slacks. A diamond encrusted watch on his wrist- a real timepiece from an absurdly expensive specialist shop back on Earth, when they’d visited their only living relative outside their parents- Nicolette Marjorie, an  _ ancient _ old woman who was their father’s aunt or something. It was really just a shopping trip. The woman was definitely a Ryder; which meant that their conversations were short lived, awkward, and more often than not frigid to the point of insult. 

“Sara,” Scott greeted her coolly, his dark eyes flicking down to the table between them which was already littered with little finger foods and glasses of something blue, “I took the liberty of our appetizers. You still like calamari, right?” 

Right, and the cafes were stocked with absurdly expensive cryo kept Milky Way food. 

Nothing but the best for Scott Ryder, it would seem. She noted other patrons looking on enviously as their more bland artificial food paled in comparison. She wanted to assure them that Kadara’s farms would be up soon enough, and the colonists could start getting options. Not just fruits and veggies to process into nutri-mash, actual orchards and a quality of living that could get them back to Earth standard. Without billions upon billions of people to support, the human race would be able to start living again. 

“I guess,” she said with a shrug, “it’s only been a handful of centuries since I’ve had it.”

He didn’t crack a smile, and instead took a sip of his blue drink, which she assumed was alcoholic.

“You cleared to be drinking yet, Scott?”

“I’m not clear for the gym, either,” was all he gave as a response, after another, larger, sip.

Sara fought down the acid on the back of her tongue. Two seconds and she was ready to shout at him again. They got along great when things were good, but when he started pulling the guilt tripping, the cold shoulder, the holier-than-thou bullshit, she just couldn’t handle it. No one made her see red faster than her twin. 

“So, it looks like you’ve made a friend.”

Sara thought she might have spotted a ghost of a smile. 

“Not much else to do.”

“He’s the turian Pathfinder, Scott, that’s no small feat,” she raised a brow, willing him to just take the damn compliment. “He just lost someone-”

“I know all about Macen, you don’t need to tell me,” Scott waved a hand at her, and Sara bristled, but  _ kept it down _ . “Avitus has been generous with his time. The turian species is limping, they got hit the hardest of the arks. They aren’t focused on expansion at the moment, just recovery. So he hasn’t got much to do beyond transferring stasis pods and arguing with Tann about towing the ark back to the Nexus for repairs.”

“They haven’t done that yet?” Sara raised a brow as she popped a curl of the fried squid between her lips. It was a dream compared to the experimental and often failed dishes that the crew put together on the Tempest. 

“No,” Scott looked a bit irritated, but she could tell his irritation wasn’t geared toward her anymore. “They unloaded the stasis pods, and it took long enough to do that, but now they’re saying there’s no point in towing the ark, that they should just strip it down for scraps and parts,” he waved a hand, “but what kind of message does that send to the turian people? The Leusinia was trashed too, and it still got back here. The asari have a place to call their own, a representative structure of their species.”

Sara nodded and then, she smiled just a bit, “You’re pretty invested in this.”

“Not like I have much else to occupy my time.” He readjusted in his seat for a moment, then looked at her with an expression that was still guarded and closed, but seemed a tad less hostile than when she’d arrived, “I am supposed to be part of your team, you know. I still intend to be, once Harry gives me the all clear. I’ll go insane- or start picketing Tann’s office- if they give me some  _ job _ just sitting around here.”

“Yeah,” she agreed with a snort, and the blue drink to wash her food down, “you definitely will.”

The conversation drifted to Eos, then, which was a topic Sara was more than happy to talk about. Eos was something of her pride and joy. She’d all but scraped that colony out of the dirt herself; completely uncharted territory. They were naming the newest settlement after her family, they said. Scott was used to her preening when it came to her accomplishments, and he let it slip by without complaint.

After a while, something close to relaxation had settled between them. The sunlamps overhead had been turned to their moon setting, and Andromeda stars dotted the artificial sky overhead. It was gorgeous, and the little glo-light on the table between them almost looked like an old Earth wax candle. 

Sara had gone on, telling him about the crew, where they came from, their strange mix of personalities- and he finally decided to interrupt her.

“So that man that was with you in the gym earlier today, was that Liam?”

Sara stuttered, and then fell quiet. Scott was frighteningly efficient at reading people- he made her abilities, even with SAM, pale in comparison. She imagined if he’d been made Pathfinder, and given unrestricted access to the AI that he would have been a perfect copy of Alec Ryder. And who knows, maybe that would have been better for humanity.

Scott probably wouldn’t have fallen in love with a pirate.

“No,” she said slowly, after she’d schooled her expression. “No that was a newer addition to the crew. We picked him up on Kadara.”

“You’re being remarkably forthcoming with information on your Kadaran friend,” he said sarcastically, finishing off his second drink, “Does he have a name, Sara?”

“Reyes Vidal.” She’d almost considered giving Scott a fake name, because he’d certainly do a heaping helping of research on the man, just like he was bound to do- or already had done- on her other crewmates. Especially with the way she’d faltered in introducing him. 

“You haven’t said anything about him.”

“We haven’t really gone on any missions together, yet.”

‘ _ Bang _ ’.

She swallowed heavily and took a hasty drink from her glass. Scott noticed that too, of course.

“Any particular reason you’re being so tight lipped about this one?” He almost sounded  _ patronizing _ , damn him.

“He’s uh,” the first man I’ve ever loved, a criminal, a fantastic dancer, “um,” a talented infiltrator and rifleman, a smuggler, a hacker, “well he’s just a- I don’t really know much about him. That’s all.” That was true enough. 

‘ _ There’s a lot you don’t know about me _ ’, the feel of his lips on her ear- the crack of his hips against her like the shot from a gun. His arms gripping her close, his mouth on her neck. 

“Uh huh,” Scott’s eyebrow was making a slow journey up into his hairline. “You’re gonna want to untie that knot you’ve got your tongue in. You might swallow it.”

She glared at him and dabbed her lips with her napkin. Dinner had been amazing-  _ real _ steak and potatoes. That Scott was dumping this many credits into one meal was kind of his way of being affectionate. Since they were both too emotionally stunted to just say, ‘I love you, I missed you, I’m so glad I’m not alone in this new galaxy’, he decided to buy her with Milky Way food, and she, to allow being bought. 

Scott let her have her time of silence. She knew from experience with him, though, that he was really just formulating his next plan of attack. He kept his eyes casually on the table, but they occasionally flicked up to her, adding detail after detail to his arsenal. 

Then, to strike.

“So, you’re sleeping with him, right?”

At least she’d been expecting it. No one could read her better than her brother, and Sara wasn’t exactly sure how to be subtle about a relationship, anyway. 

“Ah, yeah.”

“Hmm.”

Scott tipped his head to the side and let out a long sigh, waving a hand around, “Is this the part where I get to pretend to be the big bad brother? Should I threaten him with my rifle, or something? I’m not sure about the procedure. It’s obviously serious, if he’s got a name and he’s on your ship. I didn’t think you did serious- and thus, my protocols aren’t prepared for-”

“You  _ ass _ !” she was grinning, though, and reached over to swat his arm. He leaned out of the way,  _ finally _ smiling back.

“Hey, I’m just trying to figure out what I should do in this situation.”

“Nothing! Or better yet, just don’t be you. You’re terrible.”

“Ouch, Sis. That really hurts.”

“You have to have a heart for it to hurt,” she sang, grinning as she leaned her chin on her hand, elbow propped on the table. It was a little mocking phrase she’d used on him since they were little. She knew he had feelings, he was just even worse at showing them than she was. 

But this time, there was something that flickered in his expression. 

“Well, I guess if we’re getting things out in the open,” he motioned for another drink from the waiter, and then turned back to look at her with a sigh, “Avitus and I are...together, I guess.”

Sara blinked several times.

“What?”

“Well, we haven’t slept together or anything. I told him I needed to do more research before we breach that particular interspecies barrier. But, ah,” he rubbed the back of his neck, shrugging, “we’re a thing. He likes titles more than I do. Says he’s done being ashamed of who he loves. Introduces me as his boyfriend.”

Her mouth was hanging open, and she saw color start to infuse his cheeks.

“Look, don’t get all weird about this, okay? You were gone and I was freaking out and he caught me right in the middle of it. It started out as pity, I know it did. But then he started coming by to check on me. He would send emails and call me all the time and...I don’t know, alright? It just happened. We shared grief in common. He was someone to talk to, someone who understood. And I figure it’s a big new cluster, and I have to have more than just  _ you _ when your dependability is on the low side.”

She managed to close her mouth, only to stutter a few times before her voice came back.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk so much.”

“Oh  _ shut up _ .”

“Scott!” She smacked a hand against the table, making the waiter jump as he set down another round of drinks, “you’ve never done the feelings thing! You said it was for chumps!”

“Yeah, well,” he sighed, “I got a big whopping heap of them when you came into my head and told me dad was dead and Heleus was a bust.”

“Sorry about that,” she muttered, guiltily, “I ah...Thought honesty was best.”

“It was,” he drained half his glass in one go- talking about feelings stressed him out  _ more _ than it stressed her. She was impressed he’d said anything at all. “I’m glad you didn’t lie. That would have made waking up to what I did worse. At least when I opened my eyes, I knew what I was getting.”

She nodded, and they sat in quiet contemplation for a time. After a while, the waiter informed them the cafe was closing. Scott paid the astronomical bill that nearly had Sara fainting- but he was a hoarder that had pockets of credits packed away god knows where, and was probably richer than she or their father ever knew.

They walked quietly down the long hall to the transit station, the stars glittering out the window that ran along next to them. 

After a time, he spoke without looking at her,

“So, what about you and this Vidal guy? You’re not letting him use you, are you?”

Sara couldn’t help her laughter. But with the alcohol loosening her like it had, it came out a little bit hysterical. “He’s not using me, Scott. I can tell you that much. I might be using him. I don’t know. I have as much experience with these things as you do.”

He nodded, sighing, looking out the window.

Then, “Dad really fucked us up, huh?”

His voice sounded thick, and she wondered at the reason he wouldn’t look at her. She supposed she’d lost track of his drink count- else there was no way he’d be talking like this. 

“It wasn’t  _ all _ Dad,” she felt an uncomfortable tightness in her throat. After a moment, she took in a shuddering little breath, “He saved me, Scott. Took his helmet off his head, and put it on mine. I was so far gone, I don’t know if he knew for sure if it’d even work. Maybe he asked SAM for the probability...Maybe he decided it was worth the risk.”

She heard the tears in his voice now, as they stepped into the blessedly empty tram, and he punched in the habitation deck, still without looking at her. 

“He might have. Might not. He still would have done it either way,” he took a moment to sniff hard, and wipe his eyes with the cuff of his sleeve, refusing to turn around, still. “I found- I...I found an audio log in his room. He said he loved us. Wished he would have told us.”

Sara lost it, then. 

She sat down on the bench seat nearby and put her head in her hands. It wasn’t the angry crying that she’d let loose on Reyes, earlier. Nothing quite so unrestrained. But it was quiet sobs, heavy with grief and lost opportunities. 

Eventually, Scott’s arm came around her shoulders, and she felt him settle beside her. 

He pulled her into his chest and muttered, “I’m here, Sis.”

He took a little breath, and kissed the top of her head, “I’m here.”


	9. Defiance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Weird, that the return of my muse coincides with the end of my hell-shifts at work. Hmm.  
> Anyway, enjoy a chapter in which Sara tries to be okay, very clearly isn't, then get's pissed off when everyone points it out to her.

* * *

 

 

Reyes was asleep when Sara came back to the apartment. 

She took a moment to watch him, curled on his side with his hand beneath the pillow- doubtless, there was either a knife or a pistol clutched in his unconscious fingers. She wanted to ask him when he picked up that habit. 

Weak at the knees- completely empty. She felt like someone had scraped out everything inside with a knife and the wounds had twisted into scars. A husk, dried out and papery. But her cheeks were still wet from her tears- from her brother’s tears. They’d mingled, at some point. It’d been hours that they sat together, after all. 

The dogtags burned her palm. 

Scott had slipped them into her hands before he took a different hallway to the Pathfinder’s quarters. He’d shaken his head when she tried to give them back.  _ Alec Ryder _ . N7. Dates, Alliance. Things that were hundreds of years ago, and just a few weeks out of her grasp. The displaced sense of time was never ending. She’d died in that stasis pod, come out thinking she was the same- and then after Habitat 7, realized that she wasn’t. Not at all. Something else had been waiting inside and wearing her face. Now, it was gone. Empty. Nothing but sawdust.

The Sara Ryder that stood in the doorway and watched the man she loved take deep, even breaths in sleep was not the Sara Ryder that had left a few hours ago. She was- but she wasn’t. The layers were gone and all she was, was what her father’s death, and six hundred years asleep had made her. Scott had seen it- in the end, he had accepted it. 

Her eyes were like burning coals in the darkness. She wanted to set the room on fire. 

Instead, her omni tool told her she had a message waiting. 

The orange screen lit up the dark of the apartment. It lit up Reyes’ cat eyes, glittering in the gloom. It lit on the dull shine of the blade he’d had halfway drawn from under the pillow. 

“Ryder? It’s Dunn. Urgent-  _ Urgent _ . Need you to come up to the bridge right away.”

Sara’s eyes never left those of the man in her bed. 

“I’ll be there,” her voice was too loud for the scattered silence of the room. 

The light went out. She was blinded for a moment. Just long enough for his hands to come around her waist, for his nose to drift close to her temple. The deep ache in her bones pulsed when his nose brushed her cheek. When he was bound to feel the wetness there. But he wasn’t surprised. After what he’d seen in the gym? How could he be?

“Do I need to insist that I come with you,” his voice was husky with sleep, a deep rumble of sandpaper, “or is it understood, at this point?”

“I know why you’re here, Reyes,” she assured him, her hand coming up to settle on the back of his neck. There was a sound in the back of his throat that was entirely too pleasing as he pressed closer to nose along her jaw. Not kissing. Just feeling. Proximity. It’d only been a few days- only a few days. Since the cave. Since he’d ripped himself open and laid his tender, bloody truths at her feet. She’d made a mess of his careful organization. She would have to set it right. 

“Do you?”

Challenge in his voice. He couldn’t settle. There would always be another fight. She liked that. His shirt was soft beneath her fingers as they trailed down his shoulders, his back- felt the pistol he’d tucked in his pants as he’d rose from the bed. Maybe it’d always been there. Careful Reyes. A gun in the dark, or his gun in the dark. Sloane would have died either way. 

Her father had warned her about men like him. 

“I do,” she mumbled. It was a breath against his collarbone. The easiest thing for her to reach. He seemed to accept that, and retreated into the shadows. SAM let her eyes adjust- or maybe he had some time ago. Sara wasn’t sure. In the darkness, she pulled off her dress, and he watched her out of the corner of his eye as he laced up his boots and pulled on his jacket. She shrugged her hoodie over her shoulders, and her sweat pants. She didn’t bother with a pistol, he had the guns covered. But she loaded her ‘tool up with everything an infiltrator would need. She didn’t need to say the profile out loud before SAM made the switch. 

Her world shifted into muffled quiet, and her eyes lit up to the darkness around her. Pathways lit, neurons firing that usually chugged. She took a breath. Maybe this was what he felt like all the time. 

The walk to the tram, then the bridge, was one done in silence. But they were hyper-aware of each other. Reyes could tell something was different. That she’d been burned out. He was like a careful predator, prowling around the edges of her vision. Never quite beside her. Never quite behind. It was settling. She felt like her bases were covered. 

The Atrium was dark and quiet this time in their artificial night cycle. The plants that populated the center of the space made it warm and humid. It felt like Havarl on the back of her tongue. Sara closed her eyes, and for a moment, she could see the moonlit skies, the dense canopy above her. 

_ Here there be dragons _ . 

Her eyes opened, and she ignored the looks from the midnight shift workers. Always at a panel, a screen. Keeping this place running on duct tape and paper clips- her father had said it would be like that if they couldn’t get a solid outpost established, quickly. She wondered if anywhere in that endlessly scheming mind of his, there had been the barest notion of ‘kett’, or ‘scourge’ or all the things that had gone so quickly wrong. She wondered if he thought about dying on the first mission. If he would have, if she hadn’t been there. 

A little breath, brushing close to Reyes, so his shoulder knocked hers, and she was grounded again. 

They climbed up the steps to the bridge, and found Captain Dunn standing alone by a screen. She looked grey. Her hair, the lines around her lips. She’d aged more in a few months than most people did in ten years. The Captain’s eyes immediately flicked to Reyes, and grey turned to white as her lips stretched in displeasure. 

“Ryder, this is a  _ sensitive _ matter-”

“He’s fine,” he’s  _ mine _ , “just tell me what you needed from me, Captain.”

Dunn paused for a moment, her eyes flicking between the two. Reyes’ still gleamed gold in the low light. He was tall- not enough to stick out in a crowd- but enough to be intimidating. Dunn wasn’t someone who was intimidated, Sara knew that. But maybe the foreboding, oily aura Reyes gave off as a rule was enough to quiet her objections. For now. 

“You’ll forgive my brisk address,” Dunn said, with a twist to her mouth now, “but this is a matter best handled  _ discreetly _ .”

“You’ve made that apparent,” Sara said wryly. Dunn’s twist turned into a full frown, now. Alec Ryder had been Alliance- sure, he was rogue, but Alliance is something that’s bred into bone. He’d still been polite, when it wasn’t dire. Sara and Scott Ryder were not polite. Sara was too hollowed out right now to even try. 

“Short version; one of Harry’s med-techs snuck a relative on board,” oh, this wasn’t going  _ anywhere _ good. Sara was also hopelessly devoted to the Initiative her father had died for- despite her infatuation with an exile- and had an automatic spread of acid in her mouth for anybody breaking through its fledgling code. What if that weight imbalance had run them into the scourge? What if- what if? She had to remind herself not to snarl. She had to remind herself that the exiles had reasons. That they were people. Like Reyes. Like the man she loved. Calm. She felt his hand at the small of her back. Just a brush. Briefly. Keep her on task.

Dunn had been talking this whole time. SAM played it back for her at three times the speed. 

“Does Tann know about this?” Sara asked first, because, as a Pathfinder she should be loyal to him. As Sara Ryder- he could piss off. This was Jien Garson’s- Alec Ryder’s- vision. Not his. He was running it into the ground. 

“What? No,” Dunn said too quickly. Sara couldn’t help the twitch of her lips. She tolerated Dunn for a reason. 

They were sent off after Dunn had a promise of silence. And swift measures to be taken. 

“This isn’t good,” Reyes said quietly as they made their way to the cryo bay. 

“I didn’t think you were one to point out the obvious,” Sara muttered without looking back at him. The midnight halls were swiftly closing in. What kind of disease were they talking about, here?

“It’s not,” he repeated, “we have a miniscule foothold in the cluster as it is. Viral spread? That could knock us off the map. If this ‘relative’ gets off the station-”

“I highly doubt they could make it all the way to Kadara, Reyes,” she said with more venom than she meant. “You’re little corner of the cluster will be  _ fine _ .”

“That isn’t what I was implying,” he said lowly, a curl around the edges of his words. Danger. 

“I know,” she said in a rush of exhaled breath as they stepped off the tram, “I’m just tired.”

As they went down the steps, he caught her hand, and gave it a hard squeeze. She looked up at him. Really looked at him. The light caught the curve of his cheek, and he tossed her something like a reassuring curl of his lips- not quite a smile. But she could see him underneath it- the calculation in those eyes. Everything came down to numbers with him. Cost, benefit. When he looked at her, she liked to imagine those numbers were adding up to something else. He tipped his head to the side, and they made for the med bay, to see exactly what they were dealing with. 

Harry was frantic when they spotted him in the corner, grilling a small crowd of cowed med techs. One of them in particular looked like he’d been crying. Harry couldn’t even meet his eyes. He was too furious. But when he spotted Sara, he snapped something at them in a hushed scramble, and then stormed over to her. His eyes lit on Reyes for the barest of moments- but the man was a Doctor before he was into politics. He wanted this taken care of, Sara could tell. 

“Good you’re here,” he said in a rush of syllables mashed up too closely, “Dunn briefed you?”

“Not much beyond a summary,” Sara said, “said to speak to you for the full brief.”

Harry dragged a hand down his face and muttered something about wasting time, then, “Fine. Here we go; before we left, my med tech Charlie helped his Aunt sign on to the Initiative.” Well, Sara thought, that was better than her initial suspicions. Charlie must be the crying man back with the other techs. She felt less like strangling him now. Still, like strangling him. Maybe just a little less violently. “She has TH-314. Deadly, highly contagious in the later stages. And jumps across species. It  _ was _ dormant, but flared up when Charlie woke her. He just assumed it was stasis sickness- there’s no cure, no vaccine- it’s deadly in it’s final stage and  _ she’s off grid _ . She’s a problem.”

Sara felt her teeth grinding. Thankfully, Reyes spoke for her,

“When is it that this disease becomes contagious?” 

Harry glanced at him, like he’d forgotten he was there. Narrowed eyes were all Reyes got in the way of appraisal, and Harry glanced back at Sara as he spoke, 

“Stage one symptoms are similar to Stasis sickness, which is what fooled Charlie. Stage two is marked by extreme bouts of paranoia. It becomes virulently contagious in Stage three. Airborne. The works.”

“Is anyone else infected?” Sara grated out, her eyes again flickering to Charlie. The other med techs were  _ comforting  _ him. He should be cuffed. In a cell. This was akin to treason. It had to be some kind of crime to bring someone with something like  _ this _ to their new, uninfected home. This was part of the reason for  _ leaving _ the Milky Way. Leave the old problems behind. 

“No one so far,” Harry was saying outside her haze of red, “According to the test results I recieved, she’s still in Stage one. If she progresses to Stage three-  _ Ryder _ , it’ll be  _ bad _ .” Harry’s eyes got that crazed look in them again that only a medical professional could get when faced with something that was totally, and completely out of their control, “It’s a rare disease, but the kind that stars  _ pandemics _ .”

Charlie should have run- no. Sara took a breath. No one knew about this. No one outside that little clustered group, and they were rubbing his shoulders. 

Reyes spoke for her again, asking for leads. His clever mind was already forming them, she knew. But he still asked, because he was thorough. Information was his lifeblood, and he hoarded it to survive. Harry told them where to start; customs. If she got off the Station...They didn’t want to consider it.

Harry said something about ‘helping’ the woman, and Sara’s mouth nearly dropped open. No- terminal, deadly disease that could infect the whole of Andromeda from a woman who wasn’t even supposed to  _ be  _ there? Who threatened the whole of the Initiative?  _ Pandemic _ ?

Alec Ryder raged in the back of her head, and red swallowed up her vision. 

There was only one way to help this woman, now. SAM was quiet, Reyes was steering her out of the med bay. But Sara knew. She knew what her father would do. 

And she wasn’t about to let him down, now. 

 

 

Tecunis. Zaubray. Anasa. Solminae.

“Pathfinder. Scans confirm the shuttle’s trail leads to a crash landing site on Kadara’s surface.”

It’d been a long day.

A very long day. Hours and hours spent in FTL, chasing the ghost of this woman who was getting sicker and sicker with each system they hopped to. Each system where she could have been caught if they’d known just a  _ bit  _ sooner. If Captain Dunn had hailed her an hour earlier. If Harry had told the Captain a moment quicker. If Charlie had never snuck his time bomb of an aunt onto the Hyperion. 

Sara had hardly left the helm, her hands gripped onto the railing, watching the galaxy speed by in the FTL trails. Her teeth had been clenched so hard her jaw ached hours ago, and now it was spreading down into her neck. The muscles in her shoulders were knotted up and tense. 

All the things they had to contend with- why did  _ this  _ have to be a problem? If Charlie couldn’t leave his life behind like the rest of them, then he shouldn’t have  _ fucking  _ come-

“What was that you said earlier?” Reyes was the last person she wanted to talk to right this second, as they began their turn to an inbound route for Kadara, “‘It’s not like she’s going to get all the way out to your little corner of-’”

“ _ Vidal _ ,” Sara barked, looking over her shoulder at him, “if you think now is the time-”

“Ryder,” he returned, shaking his head, hands on his hips. Geared up. His pistol, his rifle, his knife, all in plain view. He’d been ready for hours. “Won’t you come down from there? You’re going to crack a tooth.” 

She stared at him a moment longer, then disengaged her hands from the railing, more to prove she could than anything else. Sara turned around- she’d been in her armor since they’d gotten onto the Tempest. So sure they’d intercept the shuttle in space, without even having to engage the FTL drives. So sure they’d catch up, and Ruth Becker wouldn’t have to be a problem any longer. Three jumps later, and she was sweating in her armor- it was heavy, and the metal had cut into her hands a long time ago. Her gloves creaked when she flexed them. 

“Why aren’t you more upset about this?” She hissed as she approached. Suvi and Kallo were trying very hard to pretend they couldn’t hear her. 

“Because it is one woman,” Reyes said calmly, his expression unreadable. 

“Kadara is  _ yours _ ,” she ground out, barely a whisper now. He tensed all the same. He wasn’t such an ameture that his eyes skipped to the others in the room- but they did narrow at her.  _ Careful _ , he seemed to say. But she continued, “you should be-.”

“Be what?” he asked steadily, his voice carefully controlled, “thrown off like you? Kadara eats unsteadiness up, and spits it out, Ryder. You know this. She is one woman. She’s gotten farther than we thought she would, but we’ll catch up to her.”

“I second that,” Vetra said casually as she came through the doors. She was suited up as well. A few of the others were back in the hallway. Drack had his armor on- because he always did- and ducked by them into the ‘locker room’ to load up his guns.

“Yeah, I guess I’ll take Vetra and Drack with me this time around,” Sara said through her teeth. She wasn’t the Captain, but she was the Pathfinder, damn it. They’d leave the meeting, and the  _ ship _ when she said so. She was getting tired of this shit. 

“Oh, come on Ryder,” Vetra waved a taloned hand, “Reyes is coming too. He asked us to go, actually.” 

Sara turned furious eyes to the man standing in front of her. He looked back with that impassive  _ calm _ that he always seemed to have when the situation didn’t directly involve his murderous ex. Unflappable. It was making her want to shoot him. Just to get the look off his face.  _ Charlatan _ .

“You’ve got enough ‘Hyperion wrath’ for all the humans aboard the ship, Ryder,” Reyes said placatingly, “I thought a few good shots with level heads would be good for you.”

“You don’t choose my squad,” she choked out past her rage, “I choose my squad.”

“Sure,” he nodded, “when you’re in the right frame of mind.”

“The  _ right frame of mind _ ?”

“Look at yourself,” he said seriously, “you haven’t moved from that station all day, you’ve been in your armor, and I could hear you grinding your teeth on the other side of the ship. This is about more than Ruth Becker.”

“Don’t try to get in my head,” the ‘in front of my crew’, was unspoken, but glaring. “This is  _ my _ ship. I brought you with us to  _ help _ , not to tell me I’m doing my job wrong!”

His eyes went and narrowed again, and she could see she’d struck a nerve. 

“Fine,” he said after a tight moment. Vetra blinked, behind him, “who would you like to bring with you, groundside, Sara?” 

Sara. She was about to explode. Alec Ryder would have exploded. He would have railed into Reyes and showed him  _ exactly  _ where his place was on this ship. Mainly, the airlock. Her father would have locked down his authority-

Her father wouldn’t be losing his cool like this- or sleeping with Reyes. 

Sara stopped. 

Ever since she’d gotten back from dinner, she’d felt hollowed out, carved, burned. She was empty, and the first thing she’d let fill her back up was rage. Grief was still so fresh in her mind that all she saw when she thought of Charlie- of Ruth Becker- was a threat to what her dead father had built. When she looked at Reyes, an exile, she saw that too. It was why his guards were up. Why he was unsure of her. Why he’d told Vetra and Drack to come along- because he’d seen her in the gym, and he wasn’t sure if she had it in her to be stable, right now. 

She’d  _ died _ damn it. 

No. Sara was never going to get anywhere if she kept using that as an excuse. Burned out. The mask was gone. The thing that had come out of the stasis pod was new, and yet already battle worn. But it hadn’t seen sunlight, and it was floundering. 

She took a breath, then another. Because her father let her. When he took his helmet off, and gave it to her. He let her. His dog-tags felt like hot brands where they lay on her chest. Kadara was special, Reyes was special, the Initiative was her father’s, and Ruth Becker was a threat. Those were the facts that had sent her into a spiral. But in the end, they couldn’t control her. They were just words, just things, just feelings. Scott could compartmentalize. She could too. 

Her struggle must have shown on her face, because after a moment of silence, Reyes said her name again, softly. When was the last time she’d slept, anyway? Half an hour the other night- SAM had her running on fumes, but she could practically feel the exhaustion creeping up through her brain stem. How much longer could the AI keep her going on nothing?

“I don’t know how to handle all this, okay?” She finally said, calmer than she felt. He blinked, then nodded, “any of it.” She looked to Vetra, to Drack, to Liam and Cora huddled by the door. Cora looked guilty, Liam looked confused. “You all know I don’t. I’m sorry.”

There was silence for a moment, then Liam cleared his throat,

“Well, you stopped your heart to get Jaal and I out of some handcuffs,” he said with a half grin, “so, I think you’re handling things just fine, Ryder.”

Vetra scoffed, “And you kept a crazy pirate bitch from killing my sister.” 

“You saved the Asari Ark,” Cora said softly.

“We gonna stand around being wishy washy?” Drack said from the door. He glared around at everyone, “So  _ what _ if the pup doesn’t have a clue? Point and shoot- that’s easy enough for anybody.” He snarled, turning his gaze over to Sara, “have a pissing contest about lunch table seats with your bunk mate later, Ryder. We’ve got a sick dog to put down.”

There were several indignant sputters from several different people- for different reasons. 

But in the end it was agreed that, grievances aside, they did indeed have a mission to finish. 

When they stepped into the decontamination chamber, she felt Reyes’ hand on the back of her neck, steadying her. She closed her eyes as the lights dimmed, and SAM prepared them for landing. 

When she opened them, the familiar, acid air of Kadara washed into the chamber. 

And in a weird way, it felt like coming home. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> She's getting better about it, promise. And hey, there's Kadara again! They won't be staying long, but it gets them off the Nexus, or as I like to call it, 'where my inspiration goes to die'.


	10. turn around, turn around

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Sara's rough time looks like it might start to get better, soon.

 

They’d forgone Kadara port altogether. Suvi said she’d picked up some troubling radio chatter on her way in. Reyes didn’t seem at all pleased with that, but he didn’t let it show on his face as they came down the ramp, armed and armored for whatever the badlands had to throw at them. It was something they’d address after the Becker issue was resolved. They would have to. 

Sara felt shaken and tired, but it was easier to be steady- somehow- when everyone knew she wasn’t. Vetra and Drack were pillars of support, and Reyes...He was more than that. 

His hand had slipped off the back of her neck when their boots hit the ground. With his heavy presence just where she couldn’t see him, it felt like it’d never left at all. 

Outpost Ditaeon was quiet, as they’d arrived just before the Kadaran sunrise. No one paid them any mind besides the docking authority in customs- which was Dru Senecus of course- the turian had ten jobs, it seemed. And after a short conversation between him, SAM and Kallo, they were cleared. Gil backed the Nomad off the ramp behind them, and soon they were climbing in. 

Sara settled into the driver’s seat, and there was a rushed whisper behind her that turned into a conversation of who would be taking passenger. At first, Reyes seemed like he was going for the subtle assertion that he wished to sit next to her- then, Vetra and Drack tried to pawn off the seat too quickly. Sara couldn’t help the little smirk on her lips as Reyes’ voice turned confused. 

The old Krogan settled in one of the back seats, belting himself in with all three straps, which seemed a little overkill at this point- until Vetra did the same thing. Reyes lingered there for a moment, glaring at them suspiciously, before the Nomad came to life with a growl. 

“Might want to pick a seat, Vidal,” Sara muttered as she tuned the well loved knobs and switches. 

Reluctantly, he settled into the front seat next to her.

“Is there a particular reason none of your crew want to sit up here next to you, Sara?”

“Shocks are better in the back,” she said, keeping her expression neutral, not looking at him. 

He blinked several times, but before he could ask what she meant by that, Sara threw the Nomad into gear. The tires spun wildly in the black Kadaran soil for a moment before they caught tread and the entire vehicle lurched violently forward. As soon as the screen read out a straight shot over the next hill, Sara hit the boosters. It lurched again, the engine roaring around them as the cabin tried to shake itself apart. Reyes had to grip onto every available safety bar not to go flying out of his seat with his paltry  _ one _ seat belt. Drack might have been laughing, in the back. It was hard to hear over the whine of the boosters. 

As soon as they approached the cliff incline, Sara yanked back the throttle and hit the jump brake. They were all slammed back in their seats as she took the Nomad off the path, off the  _ ground _ and into the air. 

“ _ Sara _ !?” 

Reyes shout was lost in the warning lights that were blazing around them as the Nomad went careening off the side of a cliff. 

But halfway through the fall, Sara hit the thrusters, and eased off the gas until the wheels met ground again, and they were speeding down the side of the cliff-  _ somehow _ defying gravity altogether. The warning lights continued to scream until Sara barked back to Vetra. The turian rolled her eyes, and hit something on her ‘tool. The lights shut off. Something was mentioned about ‘Gil’s gonna kill you if you keep overriding his shock protocols’.

But Sara ignored her, and soon they reached the base of the cliff. She hit the booster again and went speeding across the sulfur flats, heading towards a blinking navpoint on one of her screens. Seeing as there were no inclines here, the shocks rattled and shook, but they could hear themselves think again. And talk.

Drack hadn’t stopped laughing.

“Piss your pants yet, Greenhorn?” 

Reyes was breathing hard through his nose, pupils contracted to something like slits so all Sara could see was the gold of his eyes when she glanced over at him. 

“ _ What _ was  _ that _ ?” 

Sara gave him the most innocent look she could muster as Drack’s laughter turned to full on cackling, and Vetra began to chuckle herself. 

“Aww, you don’t like my driving?”

“You threw us over the side of a cliff!”

“It was faster.”

“Roads are  _ roads _ for a reason, Sara!”

She started laughing, too, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this upset.”

“Near death experiences tend to get me that way.”

“Well, you’re gonna be really grumpy here in a second. I just missed my turn.”

He didn’t get the chance to ask her what she meant before she slammed on the brakes and hit the boosters at the same time, cutting the wheel hard. The entire cabin was thrown violently to the right as the Nomad’s wheels locked and it went sliding wildly across the mud flats. It flew through the puddles which had been deadly just a week ago, and black mud went spraying up around them like a waterfall. Gil would have a field day cleaning  _ that _ up. Actually, he’d probably just make her do it. But the Nomad looked best, in Sara’s opinion, when she got down and dirty. At least she hadn’t started talking to it yet. 

As soon as they were facing the direction Sara wanted, she slammed on the gas and the tires screamed as they spun. With a twist and a shimmy, the Nomad was off again. They went speeding over a series of gut wrenching hills, completely ignoring rocks and bluffs to jump and run them over, instead. Reyes had his teeth bared, his eyes wild, as he hung on for dear life. Sara turned on the radio at some point. He turned it off. 

“Spoilsport,” she muttered. The glare he shot her was  _ venomous _ .

“Shuttle crash site fast approaching, Pathfinder,” SAM said calmly, oblivious to the  _ chaos _ that was Sara’s driving. 

“Alright, keep that Nav point clear for me.”

“Of course, Pathfinder.”

They flew through another series of gullies until the winding path brought them out to a scorched hillside. Sara brought the Nomad down in speed until they pulled up next to the still smoking shuttle. Frowning intensely, she hit the onboard scanners.

“No signs of life, Pathfinder. Further investigation may be necessary.”

“Helmets on,” she instructed the others, “we don’t know what stage of the disease she’s in. I’m not taking any chances with this one.” 

When they got out of the Nomad, there was a chill in the air. Not from Kadara- Kadara was hot as a baseline. No, it was the knowledge of what Ruth Becker contained within her. If she’d died in the shuttle crash, they’d have to make sure the remains were properly dealt with. The last people they needed getting infected were the Angara- the other races of course as well- but the peace they had with the locals was tenuous, and their support integral to the fight against the kett. Neither side could afford an incident like this. 

Sara’s wrist lit orange as she shined her scanner around, glaring out from behind the mirror of her helmet. Reyes came up next to her, grim and silent as the others despite his episode in the Nomad. They stalked slowly through the crash site, and he had his hand on his pistol. Just in case. 

“Pathfinder, got something over here.”

Vetra was calling from a few yards away, knelt in the dirt as Drack kicked aside a twisted piece of metal. 

“Looks like tracks,” the turian said, glancing up as Sara and Reyes approached. “Angara, I would say. Heavier imprint than usual for this dense soil.”

“Carrying something,” Reyes muttered.

“Becker?” Sara asked to no one in particular.

Vetra shrugged, “Could be. Best lead we have, since the fire incinerated any biological tells the shuttle could have given us.”

“Angara,” Drack repeated as they hurried back to the Nomad, “local?” 

Reyes shook his head, swinging himself into his seat while the others climbed in back, “No  _ peaceful  _ Angara out here.”

Sara’s heart stuttered in her chest, “Roekaar?” 

Reyes looked grim, but he nodded, “We don’t need to bother with tracks. I can tell you the way to the hideout they think is hidden, up ahead.” 

  
  


That was bad.

That was so, so bad, and Sara knew it was. They kept telling her it wasn’t, but she knew it was. But there hadn’t been a choice. 

The moment she’d moved for her gun, the Roekaar leader had shot Ruth Becker in the head. Then, Reyes, a quicker draw than Sara ever could be, had put a silent slug between the Angara’s eyes. It was over before it began, but the implications were immense. 

She’d made the  _ right _ choice. She had to keep telling herself that- because the alternative was unthinkable. A scan of the labs had shown that Angara were immune to the disease- that the Roekaar were intent on taking their skirmishes with the Milky Way aliens to  _ biological warfare _ . That was a huge jump, and it made them out to be a much more serious threat than Sara had originally considered. Jaal wanted to talk about it. Sara didn’t want to talk about it. 

When they’d gotten back to the Tempest, Ruth Becker’s remains in a stasis pod, and the rest of the Roekaar labs up in flames on the Kadaran hillside, she’d retreated. 

Retreated because she’d looked Ruth Becker in the eyes as she’d died. 

She was sick, and irresponsible, and  _ not _ supposed to be where she was, but she was still a human. A Milky Way citizen. Sara’s responsibility.

But what had the alternative been? 

Let the Roekaar leader get away with a bio-weapon.  _ Pandemic _ . 

No. She’d killed before, and this had to be worth it. It had to make sense. Just as much sense as the salarians dying on the Archon’s flagship so the kett wouldn’t get their krogan super weapons. It all came down to math. But math was cold and unfeeling. Sara was not. 

She had a hard time looking at herself in the mirror when she stepped out of the shower stall. 

“Hey.”

Her eyes flicked up, and she hadn’t realized how long she’d been leaning over the sink, staring herself in the eyes until she spotted Vetra in the mirror behind her. The turian was wearing loose fitting civvies, with a towel under her arm. She shrugged through the door, setting her towel on the shelf before leaning against it, “You good, Ryder? Been a tough couple of days.”

Sara’s eyes cut away from her. 

“Sara.”

And back.

Vetra sighed, golden eyes full of sympathy, “You’ve been having a hard time. For a while now. I guess Vidal has been helping. But, we’ve known you longer than he has. We should have been, first. You helped with Sid,” she turned a taloned hand over, “I could help with this. If you wanted. To talk- I mean.”

Sara’s hands flexed on the counter. There were still purple bruises across the backs of them from where she’d gripped the rail of the galaxy map for hours on end, and her armored gloves had cut into her. She’d been so sure of the course, focused into a sharp point by rage and certainty. But now the decision tortured her. 

“I know that all this Pathfinder stuff has been tough for you,” Vetra continued once she was sure Sara was listening. “And none of us helped much, especially in the beginning. I can see where your little ‘chain of command’ flare up today came from. We don’t make this an easy ship for you to run…” she sighed, her mandibles fluttering, “but, I still think you’re doing a good job. And, today. What you did- that was the  _ right _ call.”

“Was it?” Sara finally asked. Her voice was thin and unsure. 

Vetra kept her eyes on her for a moment longer, then, she shrugged away from the shelf, “Yeah. It was. Hey,” she tipped her head to the side, “Before I get too comfortable, want to go for a drive-  _ I’ll _ be driving, I mean. This is supposed to be relaxing.”

“A  _ drive _ on a planet full of pirates- relaxing?”

“There’s a spot,” Vetra continued, chuckling lowly, “I promise I’ll get us there in one piece. You game?”

Sara looked back at her reflection. Then quickly away. It sounded better than  _ this _ . She took a breath, and nodded.

Vetra was already shrugging back out the door, “Bring your jump jets!”

Sara had a moment to blink in confusion, then, to shake her head with a little smile before she turned away, and shuffled off to her room. 

Reyes was there, of course. He was leaning against a bulkhead, looking out the window, talking quietly into a private comm channel. The look in his eyes was focused and serious, so Sara didn’t make eye contact to disturb him. She moved by him to her locker and opened it up to pull on her undersuit. As she was zipping into it and searching around for her boots, she felt a hand on her waist. 

She looked up, and found he was still on the call, talking quietly to someone on the other end, but his eyes were on her. He kissed her cheek, and gave her hip a little squeeze, before walking back over to his little spot. Sara smiled, just a bit. He was learning when she needed space. It was… Well- it was a  _ learning _ process for both of them, this thing they had. He just seemed to be better at it than she was. 

So she tucked her helmet under her arm, patted Mitten’s head, and then went quietly back out the door. 

Vetra was waiting in the Nomad outside the Tempest. The engine was already warmed up and rumbling. The sun was making its descent towards the horizon, and the mud was still dried on the Nomad’s sides from earlier in the day. From the look on her face when she came back, Gil hadn’t tried to chew her out for it. But she was positive he’d give it a go, sooner or later. 

She climbed in beside Vetra, and glanced over at the turian, who already had the radio going. Some mp3 files she’d brought with her from the Milky way, soothing instrumentals, as classical turian music sounded like mostly off tune screeching to any other species. Merciful of her. 

They were quiet on the ride there, the only conversation that flowed between them was meaningless babble about gun mods, low and quiet. 

And when they arrived at the sulfur springs- or what used to be the sulfur springs, as the water was now just a few steps away from drinkable- Vetra brought the Nomad to a stop. She hadn’t even used the boosters once, which Sara restrained herself from jabbing the turian about. 

Once they climbed out, Vetra pointed to the nearby cliff, “That one. We’re going to climb it.”

Sara glanced at the cliff, then back at the turian. 

“You know, you may be evolutionarily predisposed to climbing with your curled talons and-”

“Ohhh no,” Vetra cut her off, “I heard the way you roasted Jaal with your ‘retina’ speech, you’re not getting me, too. You nerd.” Sara’s mouth dropped open. Did her translator malfunction, or did  _ Vetra _ just call her a  _ nerd _ ? “Come on! Less talky more climby!”

Then, she was jogging off toward the cliff, already on her way to finding footholds in the seemingly unscalable rock. 

Sara warily trotted behind her, “You know, I talk big talk when I go careening off cliffs in the Nomad, but did I ever mention I nearly fell to my death over Habitat Seven? And then I fell off a hunk of rem tech and nearly suffocated? And then the time Liam had to  _ push _ me down the Eos Vault’s gravity well because I wouldn’t go?”

“Wow,” Vetra said from six feet above her already, “I had no idea you were this much of a baby when you didn’t have the big bad Nomad to protect you. Get your ass up here, Ryder!”

Sara puffed a breath through her cheeks, and flexed her aching hands before she hesitantly grabbed onto the rock, and began to pull herself up. Not even five feet later, and her arms were already aching. She could run forever, and she could jump and roll and what-have-you, but climbing? That was a different story. 

“When do we get to use the jump jets?” She called up to Vetra, trying not to sound too much like begging just yet. 

“Oh, come on, Ryder! You can do better than a jump jet handicap!”

“The jets are my main mode of transportation!” Sara called, thinking of all the times she’d forgone stairs in their favor. But after a moment, SAM took mercy on her, and dispersed the lactic acid buildup in her muscles to make things a little easier. Didn’t make the distance below them any less as they climbed up through the fog, but it improved Sara’s chances of  _ not _ falling to her grisly death- not that she would die, the jets would save her. But it was the principle of the thing. 

Vetra made it to the top a solid five minutes before her. She took pity on the Pathfinder on the final stretch, and reached own to bodily haul the woman up over the last ledge. 

“Wow, Ryder,” the turian said with a raspy laugh, “I expected you to lose, but not  _ that _ badly.”

“It was a  _ race _ ?” Sara was doubled over, hands on her knees, sucking in as much air as she could, and resisting the temptation to kiss the solid ground beneath her feet. Vetra only laughed again, and put an arm around Sara’s shoulders,

“Come on, you can catch your breath later. You’ll miss it.”

“Miss what?”

“The  _ view _ .”

Then, Vetra turned them around. Sara’s breath caught in her throat. The sulfur springs were lit up with the sunset. Gorgeous golds, oranges, and bronze mixed in with shadows of cerulean and lavender. The rocks were like burning coals and the water, glittering sapphires with steam curling up and off them. No longer poisonous, either, as both of them were free of their helmets and respirators for this little trip. The sky stretched on above the hills and plateaus and mountains endlessly, and it was undeniably a  _ fantastic _ view. 

“This is the Habitat Four they advertised back home,” Sara said quietly, in awe of the sight.

“You made it that, Ryder.”

She looked over at Vetra with wide eyes. The turian chuckled, squeezing her shoulder, even though Sara couldn’t feel it very well through her armor, “I keep forgetting you’re only twenty-two. You’re such a kid. It’s...It’s pretty messed up that this was all put on your shoulders,” she sighed, shaking her scaly head, “but that was then, and this is now. The  _ now _ that is your accomplishments. I think you forget about those, in all your agonized brooding, you know?” She gestured out to the gorgeous landscape, “You turned this from an acid pit that was nothing but wild animals and poison gas, to this beautiful sight we see. And you did it on Eos, Havarl, and Voeld too.  _ You _ did that, Sara, not Alec Ryder. You saved the asari, turian, and salarian arks-  _ You _ .” 

Sara had tears budding in her eyes, now. 

But Vetra continued, “And if you want something beyond your ‘hang it on the wall’ accomplishments, you’ve put together a damn good team of people that  _ care _ about you. Like me, for instance.” She laughed and jostled a bony hip against Sara’s own. “You think I would have dragged your grumpy ass all the way out here and up a cliff if I didn’t?”  Gesturing around, Vetra looked back at Sara, who was silently crying, now, tears rolling down her cheeks and chin as she shuddered to try and stop them, “You want a good spot for a catharsis; go for it, girl. I’ve got you.”

Sara sputtered, then coughed wetly, trying to keep it in- keep all the leaking ‘wet’ on her face from flying in all directions. She knew turians found it vaguely alarming when humans cried, but Vetra was handling it like a champ. That thought only made Sara’s sputtering turn into laughter. 

She ducked her head, and the laughter evolved, coming harder and louder, till she slung an arm around Vetra’s hips as well, the easiest point for her to reach, and pulled her just a little closer. 

“How awkward would you feel if I told you, you were kind of my best friend in Andromeda?”

“Eh, not very. You drag me absolutely  _ everywhere _ with you. And I did kind of steal your ship out from under Addison, to get you to Eos just a wee bit faster so...How awkward would  _ you _ feel if I said the feeling’s mutual?”

Sara laughed harder, until her knees started to wobble, and gave out altogether. She and Vetra went toppling backwards until they were laying flat on their backs, staring up at the vibrant Kadara sky. They lay there until the lilacs and lavenders cooled down into navy and violet, the intensely bright Andromeda backdrop of stars racing up to fill the entirety of their view. 

“Things are gonna be okay, you know?”

Sara took a few little breaths, and for the first time in  _ weeks _ ...She felt like they might be. 

“Yeah, I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No joke, in game Vetra goes absolutely everywhere with Sara. A renewed playthrough yesterday reminded me of that, and how I haven't been including it much here. Have mercy, it's my first fic in years and I'm only just now starting to get into the meat of it!


	11. It's a four letter word

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double update today because my brain is cooperating! Have another Reyes POV chapter- it's been a while!

 

Six calls, two vid conferences, and one in-person meeting later, and Reyes Vidal was at the edge of his patience. 

No transfer of power was ever seamless, but this was bordering ridiculousness. He should have expected this, really. Kadara Port was made up in equal parts cowed citizenry, greed riddled con-artists, and murderous outlaws. Nothing was ever going to be easy with a populous like this. And of course, he knew when he chose anonymity, that there was always a  _ risk _ of impersonation, he simply didn’t think it would happen immediately after the Collective’s takeover. 

Smaller instances had already come and gone from within the ranks of his own people. But they were always little outbursts for personal gain, culled quickly. This, however, was a different matter entirely. Someone, rather high up in the ranks it would seem, had fed enough information about the Collective to a malevolent third party that an imposter had taken up his title, and was successfully throwing an entire sect of his organization off of Reyes’ own grid. Recruitment had gone up substantially after the takeover, enough that he’d been spreading past Kadara into other sectors of the cluster, helping some, harming others, usually for the general benefit of the crew. 

But this? 

“Vidal, they used your personal encryption. All of us were convinced it was  _ you. _ ”

“You really think I’d give an order to  _ increase _ the protection fees after the takeover, when that was exactly the issue of commonality we leaned on so hard to turn the populace against the Outcasts,” He asked incredulously. 

He was sitting with his second in command, Ourbek Mor, in his private room at Tartarus. It felt good to be back in the familiar environment after several days away. And yet, it felt like someone had taken his carefully laid chessboard and flipped it over as soon as he stepped away. 

“Not for me to judge,” Ourbek replied, the salarian’s expression was subdued, his vocals modulated as always. He was one of the most unflappable people Reyes had ever met, which was strange for his species. “The way your head works, I figured you’d be six steps ahead of us as usual, pull some insane reason for the move that’ll up loyalty and profits in equal measure three months from now. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.”

Reyes sighed, and when one of the scantily clad dancers entered the room to pour his drink, he waved her off, “Just leave the bottle.”

She gave him a saucy smile, and sauntered out. His eyes followed the swaying progression of her hips, and he got a flash of Sara zipping herself into that  _ tight _ undersuit, earlier that afternoon. It was late, but he hoped she’d be back from her outing with Nyx by time he got back. 

Thinking of her, however, would lead him down a very distracting rabbit hole which he couldn’t afford to be lost in at the moment. 

“So, tell me you’ve fixed this,” Reyes said, pouring the Batarian shard wine into his tumbler. Mor shook his head too quickly,

“As I said in my first message, we only confirmed it was a fake this morning. The channels you go through are heavily encrypted for public access. And this person didn’t contact any of the lieutenants who know you personally before giving the order. It all went through nonessential channels to work in at the base level. Smart. Detrimental to the groundwork we’re trying to lay for a permanent foothold in the Port.”

Reyes had to agree with him. Whoever did this knew they’d be found out relatively quickly, and also knew that it didn’t matter. The damage had been done. The protection fees had been raised and brutally enforced, and taking it back now would only make the Collective seem even more unsteady than it already was. 

“Ourbek, there’s a reason I left the five of you in charge to handle things. Do I have to make a face to face rule for things like this?”

“Your encryption is  _ personal _ , Reyes.”

He blinked.

“What are you implying?”

“I’m implying that I know who did this- because it couldn’t have been anyone else. Statistically speaking.”

He sat back in his seat, drink loosely gripped on his thigh, soaking a ring into his pants.

“She’s dead, Ourbek.”

“Supposedly. Or perhaps luring you out into the open where secondary cyphers could work on your encryptions locally while you were distracted- then  _ faking _ her death, was just the first move of many she had planned for you.”

“Ghosts aside,” Reyes said through his teeth, having absolutely no time for that particular brand of neurotic paranoia, “do you have any kind of tracer out on the command code? You said it was dispersed through nonessential channels- which ones?”

Mor levelled him with a contemplative look, but then opened his ‘tool up, and sent six different lines of code over to Reyes’ channels, “These were the encryptions. Sent through six different public terminals in Kadara port. You’re welcome to go through the security backlogs, Keema Dohrgun should have the access codes for those. But I would bet our imposter has a substantial amount of bases covered.”

“You work on the repercussions of the people with Keema,” Reyes said, rising from the couch, “I happen to be rather intimately acquainted with Heleus’s best problem solver. I’ll find our fake Charlatan in no time. In the meantime, we’ll need to set up a temporary call-check system for any commands supposedly coming straight from the ‘Charlatan’, if it’s not one of the lieutenants who made the call.”

“You’ll be happy to know I checked with the others before bringing this matter to you, Vidal. Please don’t patronize me with the suggestion that I wouldn’t.”

Reyes held up his hands as he backed toward the door, “I wasn’t. But I’m glad we’re on the same page. This will be solved before the Tempest leaves port again.” 

“Of course, Sir.”

Reyes winked, “You’re welcome to the bottle, I’ve got something a little  _ sweeter _ waiting for me back on the ship.”

“ _ Please _ leave.”

The doors shut behind Reyes, and he faded into the throbbing crowd of dancers with a chuckle that lingered long behind him. 

  
  


It was somewhere around midnight when Reyes got back to the Tempest. There was something intensely satisfying about setting the dock clearance code from his ‘tool, and boarding alone. It was the first time he’d done it- and coming in through the decontamination chamber and into the loadout room felt a little bit like wiping his feet on the ‘welcome home’ mat at the door. 

The bridge was empty as he stepped through- dark and quiet with only the occasional flicker of orange readouts on the dark displays. But there were little reminders of the people who populated it. 

Suvi had once again left her coffee mug at her desk- Reyes had read one of the crew logs as he’d been combing through the information available to him on Ryder’s team, and found that the scientist was predisposed to leaving the magnetically inclined cup on all manner of surfaces that gravity wasn’t exactly friendly towards. Sara had also told him the woman was fond of tea. Reyes made a mental note to keep an eye out for cargo that was Milky Way in origin, in case there might be a better stock of drinks he could provide for the crew. The selection they had was fairly limited, and he had begun to get used to the finer things in his carved out corner of power. 

Meanwhile, Kallo’s station was also empty, but meticulously organized. Reyes recognized a few datapads with readouts of the Tempest blueprints on them. Apparently the helmsman had a lingering disagreement with the engineer, Brodie, over how the ship was to be maintenanced. Sara said it was a constant point of irritation, and that it felt like breaking up a fight between two third-graders. It was an interesting image- the tall, lanky salarian and the stout human bickering back and forth about calibrations. 

The door to the escape pods was shut, the lock coded red which meant Peebee had locked herself in for the night. Not very handy for emergencies, but who was he to judge when he’d set up camp in Sara’s room the very first night? No one could say he wasn’t proactive in making his intentions clear. He rounded the corner to the ladders that would lead down to the first level, and slowly made his way down, trying not to make too much noise, as was his habit. 

“Vidal.”

He startled, but kept his reaction down to a minute flinch which he was sure the shadows of the sleeping ship hid anyway. Nakmor Drack was leaning in the shadow of the nearest doorway to the crew quarters. How someone as large as the krogan could be so quiet that Reyes didn’t notice them was a mystery. But he supposed Drack had been practicing for centuries longer than he could even conceive of living, so he didn’t think too hard on the subject. 

“Drack.”

“Collective’s floundering without the Charlatan around to guide them.”

Reyes went very still. Drack’s expression was unreadable- he was a krogan, and their faces usually just read different levels of fury. But Drack had a good poker face, as Reyes had learned when the old krogan had joined in one of Gil’s games. 

“How long have you known?”

“Since you came on board the ship. Been around too long to not recognize a pretty common pattern. How you got Ryder to vouch for you, I don’t know, and I don’t care. Gotta wonder, though; why bother with the secrecy at all? Seems to be hurting more than helping.”

If Reyes had expected the krogan to be anything other than ruthlessly direct, he wasn’t sure why. Still, he’d been contemplating how to get things out in the open with Ryder’s crew. He trusted Sara, and she trusted them- they were like family, she’d said once. And while secrets were all fine and good, it was easier to utilize assets when they were on your side, and aware of what it was you needed them to do. Especially Drack and Vetra Nyx, who seemed to be the closest to Ryder, and simultaneously the most involved with the back channels Reyes tended to live in, on Kadara. 

“It’s a process,” was all he said, keeping short and simple seemed best. Old krogan had deceptively sharp minds, Reyes didn’t want to talk himself into a trap. 

“Might wanna speed it up,” Drack grunted, shrugging away from the wall, “got some people here on the ship who won’t approve. Longer you keep it to yourself, worse it’ll get when your dirty laundry’s aired out.” Reyes figured he was specifically referring to Ryder’s Hyperion friends, Liam and Cora. Possibly Jaal as well, as the man looked like he’d swallowed something unpleasant every time Kadara was even mentioned. And he had a point. Sara and Harper hadn’t been on something like speaking terms since Reyes came aboard. And without even knowing the full extent of his criminal background, it was easy to see in every look Cora gave him- or didn’t give him when she was decisively pretending he didn’t exist- that she didn’t approve. Not in the slightest. He’d have to do something about that.

Liam was a different story. The man lacked subtlety in all things- but Reyes could swear something in the corner of his eye wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t that Liam didn’t outright disapprove of him- something else. But all of those things could wait until later. The only thing he wanted to do right that moment, was get out from under Drack’s magnifying glass gaze. 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said with a smile. Drack grunted something unintelligible, then turned down the hall and made his way towards the cargo bay. Reyes was beginning to understand what Sara meant about a lack of privacy on the Tempest. Close quarters like this made it almost impossible to hide things. 

A new experience, but that was what Reyes had come to Andromeda for in the first place. 

He turned from the ladder and SAM opened the door to the Pathfinder’s quarters without Reyes even having to ask. At least he was on the good side of the omnipresent AI. That was something. 

The room was dark. 

Reyes stood in the doorway for a moment, listening, letting his eyes adjust. But only a moment before a soft, sleep addled voice called out,

“Reyes?”

His lips curled without his permission. 

He stepped into the room, letting the doors shut behind him. There was a dark lump in the bed that’d shifted when he walked in, but all he heard was sleepy huffing and yawning. “Be over in a minute,” he said quietly, walking over to his footlocker in the corner of the room where she kept her clothes and armor as well. He peeled out of his quarter jacket and cargos, shucking his boots and balling up his shirt and undershirt as well. He tossed them in the laundry chute for the auto wash cycle, hoping there wasn’t too much of a queue built up. The last time he’d gotten stuck behind Peebee’s laundry, and the woman wore so many layers, and had at least three different jackets all in the same family of violet purple that had to be washed on delicate settings- well, it took an incredibly long time for Reyes to get his jacket back. But he didn’t bother checking the queue status. He simply pulled on a soft pair of sweatpants, and approached Ryder’s bed. 

She was laying on her side, facing him. Her chameleon glass window wall was set to reflect the stars above Kadara, and they lit the room with a low glitter that turned the curve of her face a dull silver. 

“Hey,” she whispered, reaching a hand out for him. His heart clenched at the sight of her mussed hair and drowsy, trusting movements. He’d never had someone reach for him before. He’d never had someone waiting for him in bed. Someone to come home to. 

“ _ Buenas noches, Princesa _ ,” he mumbled, pulling back her soft sheets to crawl in beside her. He took her hand and pulled her closer. As if out of a habit they hadn’t been together long enough to form, she snuggled right into the crook of his arm, resting her head on his shoulder, listening to his heartbeat. “Did you have a good time with Vetra out in the hills?”

“Kadara’s pretty,” she muttered, snuggling closer. “Vetra says I did a good job. Then she made me cry. Doin’ a lot of that lately.”

“Probably because you didn’t do enough of it when you needed to,” He said with a little chuckle.” Her response was unintelligible, so he continued, “And you  _ are _ doing a good job. The best job, my little Pathfinder.”

“M’not little.”

“You’re the littlest woman I know. Even Cora is taller than you.”

“Cora’s a commando.”

“I’ll ask you what that has to do with anything in the morning.”

She buzzed her lips against his chest, and a little shiver ran down his spine. Reyes was quiet for a moment, then, he looked down at the top of her head, the silver light playing on her inky hair. 

“Sara?”

“Hmm?”

“Can I kiss you?”

She giggled against his shoulder, “Why’re you asking?” Her voice was so drowsy, so carefree, that he felt his heart pick up in response. It seemed the ways she could make him want her were endless. 

“Because you’re half asleep,” he muttered, slowly rolling them over so he perched over her, letting her legs naturally settle on either side of his hips. “Just didn’t want to...surprise you.”

“I like it when you surprise me.”

He smirked, unable to help himself as he kissed the corner of her jaw. She hummed in approval, eyes still closed, lashes brushing her cheeks. Then, he let his lips trail down her neck, brushing her collarbone where the bruises he’d left from a few nights ago had yet to fade. His lips ventured down over her belly where her sleep shirt rode up enough to do so, and then, he hooked his fingers in the waistband of her shorts, and slowly dragged them down the swell of her hips, just enough to press kisses on her hip bones. He listened to her breathing stutter when she realized what he was doing, and it sounded like music. 

Even better when nosed down through the velvet of her center, and kissed the pearly bud of nerves between her legs. Her thighs hooked over his shoulders then, and he was reasonably certain she was well awake when she gasped out his name into the darkness. 

Reyes took his time. It was the middle of the night, they were both bone tired, and they were sharing a bed. There would be no hasty donning of rumpled clothes, no awkward requests to leave or stay. Not a care in the world, besides what he was lavishing on her with his tongue, at that very moment. 

Sara’s hands coming down to knot in his hair, and pull him closer so he could barely breathe- so his world was nothing but the tangy heat of her, the plush wetness that filled his mouth- was perhaps the most divine feeling Reyes had ever experienced. He’d always been a generous lover, but Reyes admittedly went after his own pleasure first, when it came to the women- and men- he took to his bed. 

But with Sara…

He could make her come a thousand times like this, swallowing her down until he was bursting with nothing but her pleasure, and he’d be sated to the point that his own needs wouldn’t even matter. Her fingers scraping against his scalp, fistfulls grabbed up of his hair, it was enough to make his eyes roll. 

Maybe that’s what love meant.

The thought made him pause. 

He hadn’t considered that word since… Since- actually, he didn’t think he’d ever considered it. It had crept in through the back door of his mind, and nestled itself down in his vocabulary before Reyes had even noticed it. It was there, sitting quietly whenever he caught Sara by the back of the neck to steady her. There, when she pressed her nose into his collarbone and took in his scent in a way she thought was subtle. There now when she arched against him, whimpering into the darkness as she found her climax, the pulses of it rolling over his tongue as it pressed inside her. 

When he pulled away from her, he was shaken, but smiling. 

He loved this woman.

Reyes couldn’t quite believe it , as he looked down at her. Glorious and beautiful, broken and hollow but full and raging, she was like a storm that had hit him as soon as he offered her a drink in Kralla’s Song. One that hadn’t abated. Here, now, settled between her legs, watching her come down from her orgasmic high, he felt like he’d found the eye, the calm while the lightning and blackened clouds of her influence raged around them. It was as unexpected as it was beautiful, and Reyes didn’t know what to make of it, because he had never felt this way before. 

He could only smile and dive back in the moment her breaths began to settle.

After all, it was only midnight, and he was nowhere near done with her, yet.


End file.
